Does the cost of wind power include a provision for the backup power that has to be available in case the wind drops? If not it sould do , in the same way nuclear has to include decomissioning costs.
What your graph seems to miss is the carbon produced in the initial manufacture and construction of each type of power generation.
The power cuts in SA are usually caused by the theft of the powerlines. Apparently stealing copper cabling is "big business" over there.
We should abandon the EU and follow Bjorn Lomborg's idea on tackling climate change in his most recent CiF article:
http://
commentisfree.guardian.co...presentati.html
The thing I most like about Bjorn's idea is that whether you are a skeptic or not this is entirely worth doing as a country - putting 0.05% of our GDP into new energy research (an estimated £107.35Bn for 2007 from my calculations from the CIA world factbook) would be more than enough to start bring such technologies as wave, tidal and more exotic technologies to the commercial market, and would also make the UK a market leader on this subject.
The great thing about wind turbines is they don't do what it says on the tin; that is, the nameplate on the generator nacelle.
At its maximum allowable wind speed, you get what it says on the tin. Slightly more than that and it shuts itself down to protect itself from energetic disassembly.
Halve the wind speed and you only get one eighth of what it says on the tin.
The more wind turbines you have on your grid system, the more conventional power generators you need to be on "spinning reserve" and back-up reserve.
For 12,000 Mw of wind turbines - 15% of UK capacity - you will only be able to decommission about 3,600 Mw of conventional generators if current stability margins are maintained.
Remember that UK planted wind turbines will average about a third of there max output through an average year. And, you will need about 50 - 100 acres for a one megawatt labelled machine; they don't like standing to close to each other.
"energetic disassembly"
What a wonderful phrase.
there are several flaws in these costings, all of which mean the cost of renewables is understated. Great Simpleton's first comment is on point: and the maintenance overhead of offshore wind vastly exceeds that of onshore wind - so the whole exercise looks suspect.
Have had a quick look at Barroso's estimate of €3 per person per week / 0.5% GDP cost, here
http://cityunslicker.blogspot.co...couldnt-
be.html
and reckon it is understated by a factor of 4 or more.
.
Perhaps when they talk about renewables they are including the forgotten renewable, the Fast Breeder Reactor.
The phrase "energetic disassembly" comes from an insurance inspector's report I had when my previous company had a small boiler "explode".
The bottom line is that nuclear is the only technology that can provide the level of power density we require to replace conventional fossil fired plants. When we are currently paying about £300 a Kw installed for Combined Cycle (Natural) Gas Turbine plant and I am currently looking at a big wind turbine that will cost £750 per Kw just to supply it.
Have a look at this little bugger
http://www.repower.de/fileadmin/...dukte/
5m_uk.mpg
The Helicopter is extra by the way. This is a five Mw machine - there is a six Mw one coming - notice how far apart they are in the video. You currently need about ten blade diameters separation downwind and you can get away with five crosswind in some locations.
http://www.repower.de/fileadmin/...dukte/
5m_uk.mpg
This one may work better
Isn't it odd that the BBC environment analyst - a graduate in English by the way - pays very little attention to the costs of the EU directives but, on the contrary, reports them as the present-day equivalent of the D-Day landings ie pre-cursors of ultimate victory? Do you think the BBC has an agenda? Surely not.
Thom
Interesting link to Lomborg.
Given all the uncertainty and the massive potential downside if the hippies DO turn out to be right, I reckon most of us would go along with paying a small insurance premium.
And Lomborg's idea of putting 0.05% of world GDP into renewables research ($25bn pa) seems quite attractive.
0.05% of UK GDP would be c£750m pa, which compares to less than £100m pa currently going in (a total £500m from 2002 to 200
. We could get the rest from scrapping arts subsidies- see today's post.
Nick, Simpleton and Acorn-
I'm sure you're right that the all-in costs of windpower are even higher than 2-4 times widely quoted. You need all that back-up power, you need cabling, and you need maintenance.
I'm wondering what figure they'll finally dream up for the Severn barrage.
Acorn- somehow I couldn't get either of your vid links to work... but the opening second looked promising
Umbongo-
quite agree about the BBC's envirospin correspondent and the way the BBC trumpeted it as first a triumph, and then later as the eveil Americans welshing on the deal.
Wat
When I post the link, your system drops some of the letters in the URL and replaces them with dots.
Try
http://www.repower.de/index.php?....php?id=237&
L=1
And look for the "5M film" on the downloads on the right hand column.
Acorn try TinyUrl.com for compressing URLs.
AntiCitizenOne
Thankyou, try this one for size.
http://tinyurl.com/yr4dmg
All the best
Acorn
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