I have an incredible urge to hug Brown right now. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I hope other EU and world leaders display as much courage and wisdom.

The Governor of Rhode Island Claims His state could produce a large percentage of elctricity from wind energy in and aroud the coastal state. Looking at wind maps there is a huge potential just South of him and due East of Long Island that could serve all of New England. Washington blah blahs as Rome burns (coal).

Hmm,
I don't see what all the negative fuss is about . . .
I think it looks really cool. Beautiful picture. Kinetic sculpture... with added benefits. People should be climing over themselves to get them built in their area.

vsk

And now comes the Oil-lobbyists and this wonderful plan goes back to the drawer it was in since years...

7000 new turbines set up by 2020? Thats on average one new turbine built every 14.4 hours. Sounds a bit too fast to be really possible. Too good to be true!

I could be wrong, but I thought there were issues once wind/solar became a certain percentage above the base load? (Assuming there is no energy storage of said wind/solar) Large scale wind and solar usually don't have battery storage, so going 100% wind is difficult at best.

Does Britain intend to sell power to elsewhere, France perhaps?

The storage issue is a false issue. There are already storage mediums available that can store the energy of the wind generators at reasonable cost - eleveated hydro storage dams, underground compressed air, hydrogen gas production and storage. And there are experiments currently underway for intertie-ing plug-in electric vehicles into local grids to help balance energy flows in grids supplied by large quantities of renewables. And of course there are batteries. I am currently writing this article directly with wind energy from my wind generator, which is also recharging my house batteries. And of course, there is the simple fact that storage is an OPTION. I don't really need batteries in my house - I could simply rely on my PV panels and wind generator directly and switch to a generator when those sources aren't producing enough energy. And when they are producing an abundance of energy, my wind generator shunts the excess to an air heating electrical dump load. Wind farms can do the same - when too little is coming in, simply burn more biomass (or something else); when too much is coming in, divert the excess to heat something, or simply temporarily disconnect the wind generators.

The storage issue is a false dilemma. There are any number of options for dealing, or not dealing, with it.

There are problems when wind is powering too much of the base load and there isn't much storage. But the article says the tubrines will power 100% of the homes, not 100% of the grid, so they would still probably be fine.

This is true: There are problems when wind is powering too much of the base load and there isn't much regulation of energy flows.

Regulation can occur through energy storage and retrieval. Or it can occur through other means, such as those I have mentioned or others. The storage option isn't absolutely necessary, but it is more efficient.

However, if someone disagrees with what I said before and what I have said here, please do go into detail as to what exactly those problems are that you think will arise from over 20% of a grid's energy coming from wind while there is no storage and why you think only storage can technically solve those problems. I am always willing to learn anything new about renewable energy that anyone is kind enough to teach me.

@houston

Large scale geographically distributed wind farms DO act as baseload power. Since different locations receive different local wind regimes, a constant baseload power output can be achieved. A small amount power from peakload plants may be occasionally required, but the need for peaking power is not dissimilar to coal fired baseload required gas turbine peakload (when everyone switches on their air con for example).

See: http://www.sustainabilitycentre.com.au/BaseloadFallacy.pdf

and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load_fallacy (good links)

'Large scale geographically distributed wind farms DO act as baseload power. Since different locations receive different local wind regimes, a constant baseload power output can be achieved. A small amount power from peakload plants may be occasionally required, but the need for peaking power is not dissimilar to coal fired baseload required gas turbine peakload (when everyone switches on their air con for example).'
---I wholeheartedly agree with this completely. And this ties in to what I was trying to explain to the others. Massive deployment of wind energy onto a national grid will not be impeded by 'storage' issues. By the way, thanks for the links.

I do commend these actions but must admit that I find total loss of Aesthetics something that should be considered important.

I don't really agree with calling the issue of baseload a fallacy. It is true that geographic diversity of both supply and load, various storage (hydro, compressed air, etc.), demand management, load shifting, better weather prediction and backup sources can all play a role in compensating for variability of solar and wind. However, almost all of these incur costs through capital expenditures and also through energy losses. Storage is never perfect, for every X amount of energy put in only Y is gotten back. In general, technology with low losses, such as batteries, have very high up front cost and/or short lifespans. Hydro also has environmental issues. The UK might have some existing hydro facilities that could be upgraded to play a larger role as hydro storage, but I doubt regulations and environmentalists would permit many, if any, new facilities to be built.

Having said all that, I fully believe that the amount of wind which can be economically integrated into the grid would be far higher than the 20% which had been thrown around for years as some sort of barrier. To know how much renewables, of what kind and located where will make the most sense (avoiding as much carbon production as possible at the lowest economic cost to society) is a problem which requires a great deal of sophisticated computer analysis, matching up hour by hour demand with all the various means of production, transmission and storage.

From this announcement they don't cite any rationale for why this amount (33 GWp) is the best amount any more than people who claim it's 20%. Fortunately there are some people, such as Gregor Czisch at the University of Kassel, that are doing the detailed analysis to answer the questions. Fortunately the answers he is coming up with look very promising for renewables. Even 100% renewables could possibly be achieved with little added long term cost for energy.

Rather than calling for some huge amount of a particular pet renewable, I would urge everyone to lobby their governments to fund unbiased studies such as done by Dr. Czisch to determine long term plans that maximize benefit while minimizing cost. Having lobbyists from each renewable segment strike deals with politicians is not the best way to do this.

:)

Lot of issues here. Firstly, 2 GW of turbine capacity doesn't power 1.5m homes. With a capacity factor of 30% and no unusable surpluses, the 2GW of turbines will deliver about 5.8 TWh of electricity per annum, which is considerably less than the annual electricity used used by 1.5M homes. ( more like 7.5-9TWh)

Then there is the issue of matching supply and demand. So although the 2GW of turbines may produce 5.8 GWh of electricity, much of it may be produced ( such as at night) when domestic demand is low. Given that there is usually a surplus at night from fossil fuels ( and certainly will be from nuclear as you can't just turn it down like a domestic gas cooker) a considerable percentage of the turbines output will be wasted. The more turbines in the system, the more waste there will be.

Anyone who says storage isn't an issue can't add up.
The poster who says he doesn't need storage should try getting rid of his batteries and seeing how well he does with his solar PV and wind turbine on a windless night.

So lets continue the fantasy. I don't live in the UK and offhand don't know how many households there are. Lets say at least 20M though its probably more than that.

So if an average household uses 5-6MWh per annum
( Govt stats would back this up), 20M homes need 100-120 TWh per annum

Of course demand is rising 2-3% year on year and the population is growing too so by 2020 the domestic usage may be more like 150-180TWh per annum unless drastic energy curbing measures are introduced.

33GW of turbines may produce about 100TWh per annum, but in a relatively closed system such as the UK up to 40% of this will be lost as unusable surpluses. Don't imagine that this surplus can be spirited down interconnectors to the continent, as interconnectors capable of handling such surpluses and delivering to somewhere where is might be needed will never be built.

Its rather simplistic and naive to think of this as a solution. Certainly, ramping up wind is a good idea, but its not a panacea for all the ills of an unsustainable society.

Andy Wilson
Editor
Sustainability magazine
www.sustainability.ie

And now comes the Oil-lobbyists and this wonderful plan goes back to the drawer it was in since years

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