Renewal energy...... im not a rocket scientist, but.....

Al right I didn't know that

Binary cycle geothermal plants look promising

Also

Thorium reactors are a good alternative to Nuclear reactors.

ITT: people with no background in energy or environmental economics, climate science, engineering and so on believing themselves fit to solve the vast, intricate problems met by those deciding UK energy policy.

Not sure if you mean the Cabinet or here?

Not noise! That's way worse for the atmosphere than carbon dioxide!

What about space, do you know how much space it takes? Also, my point is that nuclear energy will take over and also uranium gives more energy than coal in a single kg - uranium is 50 times more efficient...

Wind turbines make a lot of noise, take up a lot of space and don't really look that nice.

That was such an exam answer xD

So basically you made it up?

What if they put the blades at different heights? One a full blade span higher than the other, then the next one would be standard height again and so on?

If I had made it up, I would have said that, wouldn't I?

Seems to me you are making it up. It costs a fair bit relative to what exactly?

The largest offshore wind farm in the world off the west coast of the uk cost £1.2 billion, and has 102 wind turbines. The average 4 steam turbine power station can cost upwards of £4-5 billion.

Relative to the worth of the electricity you're producing, which is, of course, unreliable too.

Well go on then please elaborate and tell me why they are not worth the electricity they are producing, because I have not long handed in a dissertation on renewables of which a lot was on wind energy and I found a lot in favour of wind energy being cost effective, certainly my lecturer that worked in power systems engineering for 30 years seemed to be highly in favour of wind energy. But you seem to know something about the costs that we don't.

Well, if you have just handed in a dissertation then I hope your critical analysis/general reading skills are a lot more up-to-scratch in that than on here. Firstly, you seem to be implying that I don't agree with wind energy. If you can find where I said that, I'll give you my life savings. Secondly, although I'm sure your lecturer is more knowledgeable than myself, I sincerely hope that you don't just take his or her opinion to be fact. If it were, then why would there be so many scientists out there who have the opposite opinion to him, as well as many who, I'm sure, agree.

I merely said that, relative to the amount of energy wind produces (which isn't exactly consistent), I consider the costs of producing and maintaining the turbines themselves to be quite a lot, which might be one of the reasons why wind turbines don't exist in every corner of the country. Of course, relativity is subjective - for other people the relative costs might not be so significant but for me, they are. That's merely my opinion.

Really where in my post did I imply you were against wind energy? I merely asked you to explain why you said "As well as the aesthetic problems with wind turbines, they also cost a fair bit to produce (relative to how much money they save when used, at least).". At no point did I imply you were against wind energy, but you do seem to have an issue with costs. Talk about critical analysis!

I think the point that she was making is that, per kWh, wind power is more expensive than fossil fuels. This has certainly been true historically (with the exception of small, remote communities where the cost of power distribution is high), but is becoming less so. The economics of it are very complex and there is no general agreement - in depends on a lot of factors, particularly on the pecentage of the grid which is run off wind. We can expect that the price of generation will drop in the future as the technology is not as mature of fossil fuel burning, but if the percentage of our electricity generated from wind rises significantly then there will be an increase in costs associated with distribution, storage and back-ups.

So considering only the immediate price of energy, wind power may or may not be cost effective relative to other methods. If we generated a large percentage of our energy from wind, people's electricity bills would probably need to rise at least is the short term as there would be an initial 'set-up' cost.

Of course when we consider other factors, such as CO2, and finite fossil fuel resources, we may decide that wind power is cost effective. That decision depends on what value you put on avoiding climiate change and preserving fossil fuels supplies. We may also think there is a 'cost' to having on-shore turbines in terms of how they effect the visual environment. Since these matters are subjective, it's impossible to definitively say whether or not wind power is cost-effective - it depends on what we define 'effective' to be.

Yes of course wind power is not going to be as cost effective relative to fossil feul power generation however the point in producing wind farms wasn't necessarily to compete agianst steam turbine power stations it is part of a larger scheme (which of course includes other types of renewables) to replace steam turbine plants and eventually fade out steam turbines. The uk is looking to eventually become self sufficient in producing energy so we don't need to rely on foriegn resources. Also it's part of the EU scheme to reduce carbon emissions and replace them with renewables. There is also the fact the one day we will eventually run out of fossil feuls, this wont be for a long time but starting now will gives us plenty of time to wean off fossil feul reliance.

The price of transmission and distributing power shouldn't really rise too much, it has recently with the price of copper however this is only at the small scale distribution of power as transmission and large scale distribution is done will aluminium anyway and this could effectively be introduced in small scale distribution.

We don't store power however you are right in saying there is a problem with back up in power when the supply of electricity has to upped and downed throughout the day. With steam turbines this is easy because we can just use hot rolling reserves (plus electricity reserve from france). But given wind power generation isn't consistent through-out the day reserve back ups are not as easy to produce with wind power. There also the fact that the power generated by wind energy has to be voltage controlled electronicaly, fed thorugh rectifiers and then converted back to pseudo AC. This isn't too bad in terms of cost but it would be bad if you had to rely on wind energy for reserve power. However we won't have to rely on wind energy for reserve power.

Like I said wind power is just one of many renewables that are going to be introduced over the years, it's not an absolute solution that many people believe it to be. Renewable energy is still in it's infancy and wind power is one of the fairly more mature that's why it's one of the first to be introduced, but I think some people seem to forget this or just plain don't know. Plus it doesn't help when tabloids start stating things like "wind farms in some areas will only produce power 10% of the time" and people take this at face value. Well yes this is true but what the tabloids fail to state is the areas wind farms are in are specifically selected, and that's why they won't be just put anywhere. The farms that have been built are producing the amount of mega watt capacity factor as expected relative to a decent MW capacity, infact I believe a few of the Scottish stations are producing more than expected (lanarkshire wind farm).

It just annoys me when people say ohh wind farms costs too much, but what exactly are people meaning when they say this? I agree with your point all factors have to be considered, and no in some ways it's not as cost effective relative to fossil feul plants, but it's like comparing apples to oranges. As I said renewables aren't supposed to compete against steam turbines, they are supposed to phase them out that's why relative cost can't really be compared. Trying to compare would be like saying it's cheaper to just build motorways across a city over peoples houses and through their gardens than to bypass on the outskirts. Ok maybe not a great example but fossil feuls are going to run out, the polution seems to be killing the planet and we can't keep relying on foreing resources hence why we need an alternative but you can't expected the alternative to be more cost effective. It's simple economics, opportunity cost. Although if you are to compare wind energy with fossil fuels then wind power doesn't come off bad and may even in some instances be more cost effective.

Then again fossil feul power generation isn't the highest altrenative in "opportunity cost" anyway, nuclear power is, but nobody wants this. Thanks to tabloids and deluded earth people!

Essentially with power generation you are damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Which we gonna run outta first? Fossil fuel or atmosphere