Britain facing blackouts for first time since 1970s

reply to post by ChemicalSubstance


We have only one factory in the UK that builds Wind Turbines, and that factory is closing, and is moving to the USA, due to the Government redtape, lackof business for the turbines here in the UK and local opposition to the building of wind turbines in peoples backyards. As a result over 300 Employees are being put n the dole/ unemployment centres as a result.

The ordinary people in the UK Do not want wind turbines, near thier homes, or do not want the country side wasted with these masive turbines in view.

Councils are trying to force this onto the local communities, and the councils themselves are facing backlash from locals.

The UK Government are also trying to build New Nuclear Power Statons across the country, which willbe ready by 2015 supposingly, but there is opposition from Scottish Government and Welsh assembl, who would prefer looking at alternative reneable enviromentally friendly engergy, such as off shore windfarms, using the ocean, to produce elecricity, rther than having to resort tohe use of nucler power.

[edit on 1-9-2009 by Laurauk]

reply to post by Laurauk


A lot of the time, when I've been 'OOp north' to see the 'In-laws' there are lots of turbines, some are moving , most are locked as the wind is 'too strong'.....
Local Councils demand the residents be more'eco-friendly' but wil not supply or even contemplate allowing 'Solar panels' (without having to jump through hoops with 'planning persmission'on the roofs of houses as they are an 'eyesore' to other residents. Its a no win situation to most people. Only those with a LOT of land can have solar panels or turbines, most of these devices could at least reduce the national grids demands if the councils didn't put up such a fuss.

Take my local housing 'commitee' a bunch of old fuddies who don't want anything stuck on the roof, ( its a block of flats ) as it could be, 'COULD BE' an eyesore, who the *snip* can see the top of a 7 story block of flats from the ground???. Same for the councils , they're all stupid jobsworths who have rules and regulations from the 60'a or 70's, most of them can't even turn on a computer let alone see the advantages of renewable energy sources.


[edit on 1/9/09 by DataWraith]

reply to post by DataWraith


Exactly, what annoys me more, council offices up and downthe UK, have thier employees, put thier computers on standby, rather than switching them off, then they have the cheek and adacity to tell us to be more eco friendly. Exactly the same with thier heating, they leave tis on all the year round also, even during the summer.

The above happens all the time. Isnt leaving your computers onstandby a waste of energy itself.

Completely ridiculous.

[edit on 1-9-2009 by Laurauk]

reply to post by Laurauk


Wait a minute. Isn't the government in charge here? Aren't THEY the ones who determine whether you use coal , or wind or sparks from the sky for your power?

If governement says it's right, isn't that so?

Hey, we've got this jab/shot you NEED to take.

Hey, we've got this energy "plan" you NEED to live with.

UK, stand up, queue up, get in for your life.

jw

reply to post by jdub297


Trouble is , the energy companies pay the politicians (like in the US) to keep us using their power, free energy is out there and viable, but after the initial payout for the unit itself they don't make anymore money out of the consumer. Of course the politicians won't allow the units be released becasue the current ( no pun intended) suppliers don't benefit.

reply to post by DataWraith


Yeah, but don't you guys have"current" from the GOVERNMENT? Trade some "carbon credits." Isn't that working?

Have you asked Al Gore to help out?

Maybe HE can help you guys distribute healthcare, too.

jw

[edit on 1-9-2009 by jdub297]

Originally posted by ChemicalSubstance
Time to build more windmills and create jobs building them.

Does that make any sense?

It makes very good sense, but then again we're cursed with idiots in Whitehall who refuse to make the neccessary amendments to national Planning Regulations.

Of the 8000 Megawatts total of wind-generated power projects put through planning submissions channels in recent years (both large scale farms and domestic micro) the Planning Office has blocked all but 300 Megawatts of capacity

Its precisely because it IS a viable solution, and DOES work, that the major stakeholders of the coal/nuclear centralised power-producers lobby for such competition to their monopoly strangled

reply to post by jdub297


If we could figure how to run the worlds energy demands on Bullpoop the politicians would have a job FOR LIFE>

Originally posted by Laurauk
The ordinary people in the UK Do not want wind turbines, near thier homes, or do not want the country side wasted with these masive turbines in view.

Councils are trying to force this onto the local communities, and the councils themselves are facing backlash from locals.

The 'ordinary poeple' are ill-informed selfish idiots who don't want anything in their own backyard, not micro-wind turbines, solar panels, or power stations...yet will be up in arms at the thought of power shortages because the generation-infrastructure isn't in somebody else's backyard providing the power

I'm planning on sticking a wind-turbine on my roof and it'll stay there, regardless of planning legislation or NIMBY morons...if they want it down they'd better get a warrant and a riot-van ready

reply to post by DataWraith

That's not a joke, you know?

The Native Americans of the Southwest still use "bullpoop" as a 'renewable energy' power source! We can learn a lot in many fields if we just look to the people who were here long before the "puritans' progress."
jw

turn off all those street lights ..its like walking and driving around in the daytime... they must use billions of watts of energy... dont cars have lights for the dark?.........

Originally posted by jdub297
reply to post by DataWraith

 

That's not a joke, you know?

The Native Americans of the Southwest still use "bullpoop" as a 'renewable energy' power source! We can learn a lot in many fields if we just look to the people who were here long before the "puritans' progress."
jw

Maybe I should have used the term 'HOT AIR' then?

reply to post by DataWraith


No, I think "bullpoop"is exactly what we need to deal with.

(Personal note: I've used 'cowpies' for extending fire duration. They are magic)

jw

I think it boils down to money like it always does, one single turbine built for the cost of £1million can generate enough power for 1200 homes, that's roughly £48.000 a month, at an average of £40 per household.

At the low end of the scale, an average home needs 3300kw/h of power a year. There are 8765.81277 hours in a year. Therefore, to supply enough power to 1200 homes requires 125 very large wind turbines rated at 3.6Mw each. Furthermore, the average capacity factor for wind power is 27% - so the remaining 73% of the time that power will have to be supplied by Nuclear or, Coal power. Furthermore, in Europe they've found the maximum contribution of wind power to the grid to be on the order of 10% before instability occurs - and to fix this problem would require substantial redesign of the grid.

I saw some calculations that indicates that wind was only 10% cheaper than Nuclear, but these included a wind capacity factor of 38% (fantasy land - realistically it's 27%), and 78% for Nuclear (fantasy land again, it's really 90%+). And they also included 7 billion dollar Nuclear plants taking 7 - 10 years to build...

Its precisely because it IS a viable solution, and DOES work, that the major stakeholders of the coal/nuclear centralised power-producers lobby for such competition to their monopoly strangled

Wind power is only viable on a small scale. It simply cannot compare to Coal or Nuclear.

[edit on 1/9/2009 by C0bzz]

Originally posted by C0bzz
Wind power is only viable on a small scale. It simply cannot compare to Coal or Nuclear.

What astounds me is the mentality of power-generation on a national level needing to be on a centralised massive scale just as coal/nuclear/etc currently is

It has been shown time and again that a distributed generation strategy of local-grids based on micro-wind and solar systems work and provide a sustainable and reduced-cost strategy, and are able to run in tandem with the National Grid Network.

reply to post by C0bzz

That's over $3,600 dollars per kilowatt, for energy that has a 27% capacity factor, requires backups and expensive long transmission lines...

The only solution I can think of is to build 73% more turbines and use mostly the existing transmission lines.

Would it be possible to have all our electrical equipment fitted with 110v transformers and split the energy in half? I really dunno how it works.

All I do know is I use a 12v car battery, charged by a £50 solar panel to run my PC, TV, CD player and a 12v fridge when we go camping, all I did to do that was took the transformers out and they run fine. (fridge was already 12v)

I'm thinking about buying a few more solar panels and doing the same thing for my house, I might exchange all my light bulbs with 12v halogen lamps and take the transformers out of everything I possibly can, and just use the mains for things I can't.

As you can probably tel I don't know much about electricity, I'm just lucky 12v cant kill you or Id be dead by now

The shortage of supplies will hit the equivalent of many as 16 million families for at least one hour during the year, it is forecast.

A whole hour per year.... I allready get that anyway...

The government should bite the bullet and invest in the only reliable CO2 free alternative - that is nuclear.

It is a shame that successive governments have arsed about with the industrial capability to build new nuclear power stations and have removed the capability to develop nuclear indigenously.

Of course many environmentalists hate nuclear, except a growing number who think it's OK. The debate is black and white, so we just need to get government who has balls and is able to do the right thing and develop a balanced energy strategy where nuclear is significant alongside non-environmentally damaging renewable schemes, like wind farms over-the-horizon in the Atlantic.

Regards

Wow,

A whole HOUR!
In a YEAR!

What a shock.

And what, you think this applies to just the UK? Every person on this planet better get used to the idea that energy is a main problem and will be even more so over the next fifty years.

This isn't so much about meddling governments and regional powers making demands, it's about the continued arrogant abuse of our resources.

How are we expected to supply enough facilities as the population INCREASES when we can't even do it now? It doesn't really take a lot of brain power to realise there is a major problem in the balance.

Does it not cross anyone's mind that we waste energy every day? Look at any city at night, look at the tower blocks all lit up like Christmas trees but empty, all the street lamps lighting roads and paths where no one is ever walking. Look at your own home where there are three or four lights on all night without anyone awake to actually use them, the TV on while your stereo is on, while you're at the PC...

Enough with the throwing blame around. PEOPLE are the problem here, not just governments and meddling bureaucracy.

How about people take responsibility for their own lives and their own abuses? Invest in renewable energy supplies and economic usage plans. Utilise the technology that will inevitably spring up over the next twenty years.

Most of all take responsibility for your own life. Don't sit there casting blame too far, we have all taken energy supply for granted, we've been wasteful, and we're seemingly not learning from our mistakes voluntarily.

Bring on "an hour a year" *oh the misery and pain!* power loss.
I'll be reading a book on self sufficiency, and doing so by candle light, while you'll all be tutting under your breath about how the government did it.

Build more wind turbines? Are you kidding? Pile more dumb on top of more dumb. The more turbines you build, the more fossil fuel plants you need to build to back them up. Germany just announced it must build 26 NEW coal plants.

Wind is a hoax. Please take a look here: www.ieso.ca...

Ontario has 1100 MW of wind power installed. How much power is being actually being generated as I post this message? 3 MW! That a whooping 00.27% efficiency factor!!

Oh, yeah. Let's just build more.