An end to the flawed technology of wind "farms"
Wind "farm" technology is flawed and has been disproven. It's "popular" because the huge corporations make vast profits from the subsidies available.
If no other fact persuades you, our coldest spells of weather coincide with no or little wind and thus windfarms are redundant at times of peak demand - as happened in December.
Richard Gilbert
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617 comments
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Paul Taylor
commented
Well I've stopped posting because there was too much hot-air being blown and I'm guuessing others are feeling the same!
Whatever we do or manufacture to yeild power, will have an emission figure, either during manufacturing of parts, transport or installation. So firstly, keeping those to minimum emissions, must be the first target.
Secondly, I would ask, exactly what other clean, SAFE technology is available in the immediate future?
Wind-speeds of just 6m/sec is all that's needed to turn a turbine and I know you'll find that in plenty of the sites around the UK!
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Lyndsey
commented
This forum has virtually been abandoned by the people who agree with it's title. My final comment would be to the last few posts from people who clearly have not researched the subject of wind power. Those that have and disagree with the propaganda now realise this suggestion will never be allowed to become a campaign. We will continue to fight against this flawed technology that is neither efficient or economic. The only people who agree with wind power are either ill informed or in the industry itself. You cannot argue against the maths or the science that says wind will never be anything more than unreliable and we will always need other forms of energy to back it up or the lights will go out. Oh and Ed fossil fuel power stations do not 'idle' while the wind blows. To crank them up when needed releases even more CO2. The manufacture and installation of wind farms is extremely polluting - but that has been posted here many times before. May I suggest people take the time to read older posts - that is if they care enough! Other countries are pulling back from wind power because it is flawed and too expensive - our government would do well to take heed before it is too late. In times of extreme cold here in Scotland there is often not a breath of wind for days on end yet demand surges - wind does not deliver. Well only money into the pockets of the developers & land owners - straight from additions on our energy bills. It's time everyone woke up to what a massive waste of money this is and how it will damage the environment forever.
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Phil Driscoll
commented
I agree with Ed. Of course the intermittent supply has to be managed, but it's not rocket science - they manage it very well in Denmark. Our civilisation has to make a choice. Burning fossil fuels can't continue because of CO2 emissions and the fact that the fuel is running out. Nuclear can't continue because it's incredibly dangerous, and the uranium is running out. In the end we are left with wind, solar, hydro, wave, tidal and geothermal. In the UK, wind is the most likely candidate to meet our energy needs. We have to choose whether or not we want electrical energy and lots of wind turbines, or no electrical energy and no wind turbines.
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Ed
commented
This campaign is flawed - no one claims wind power is available at all times, but when it is generating it allows fossil fuel burning power stations to idle, saving vast amounts of carbon emissions. Wind power is only intended to provide a small amount of UK power, and it's unreliability is entirely manageable by the National Grid and it's peak load management.
For those affected by wind farms, built too close to residences, I am entirely sympathetic. But this campaign says wind farms are flawed, they are not!
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deb
commented
We need to stay away from nuclear its too dangerous.
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deb
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Thers plenty of wind, for power,
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John Graham
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Hi Katey, it doesn't work like that. Power is not like a bag of sugar. It is all channeled to the National Grid and then dispersed depending on demand. As David says the Eden Project still relies on the Grid. What they are doing is making use of alterbnative sources for heat, one of the three elements of sustainable energy, electricity, heat and transport. On any one day 4% of the UK power is sourced from France, without doubt Nuclear. Wind is intermittant and rarely avialable to meet peak loads. Anything else you have been told is simply untrue. Most wind power is created in North Wales, off-shore and north of the border. Visit http://www.ref.org.uk/roc-generators/ to look at the meagre outpourings of west country power. When you are quoted megawatts of power they talk capacity. Output is variable but averages for last year 21% of that capacity. For that you are subsidising the wind generators at a rate of 100% of their actual output. This is paid by you in your electricity bills. For an average house that would be something like £157 per year. One last thought. What happens to the quality of life of those living in the West Country. Thousands of heavy lorries, the noise, the visual intrusion. One thousand tons of concrete per turbine base. Each turbine and base represents 250,000 pounds of CO2. Not accounted for in their carbon payback calculations. No, Katey. They won't look pretty when they are rusting away in a few years time and you will be paying for them for the rest of your life.
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David Baldwin
commented
Katey how can the Eden Project by self-sustainble if as you say, it sources power from an external source? Surely if it is connected to the grid you don't get to choose the generation method of the electricity used.
The Eden Projects own website says:
"A 5kW wind turbine up near our car parks feeds into our overall power supply. We explored the possibility of erecting a 2MW turbine at Eden but, following lengthy talks with local people, we decided to look at less visible renewable energy options such as geothermal power."
They also have 30kW Solar PV, Air source heat and have a 300kW Biomass Boiler. From this information, Wind plays a very tiny part in their local power generation. -
Katey Parr
commented
Wind farms allow the Eden Project to run completely self-sustainably... Eden uses only locally sourced power from the windmills in Cornwall itself... so how can they be useless? Wind farms are much better than expensive, dangerous, unsightly power stations!!! How on earth are white windmills ugly in comparison to massive ugly power stations?
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David Baldwin
commented
Those people who insist that wind turbines do not make any noise after visiting them for an hour or more, really do insult those who are forced to live with them 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you visited a place once and it was sunny, would that mean therefore that it never rains?? The answer is obviously no, but it is this kind of illogical thinking pro-wind like to use to dismiss the noise problem. Wind Turbines do not make noise all the time, in the same way they don't produce electricity all the time but there are times when they do and the noise often reaches neighboring properties at levels higher than wind operators and their regulations claim is an acceptable level.
I include this youtube link to a video showing a few recent examples of turbine noise at my families home next to Hadyard Hill Wind Power Plant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzNj9DKDk1c -
Debs commented
"Worth the Candle? The Economic Impact of Renewable Energy Policy in Scotland and the UK - March 2011 - Executive Summary - Verso Economics - Richard Marsh & Tom Miers"
This document makes interesting reading. It examines the costs placed on all of us and concludes that it is economically and environmentally damaging. The Government should not see this as an economic opportunity in terms of climate change. We already know the long term damage that will be caused by each wind turbine, each requiring 100 tons of concrete(which is permanent), steel, copper, fiberglass and rare earth minerals like neodymium for the powerful magnets. All of these involve substantial resource extraction, refining, smelting, manufacturing and shipping. Land and habitat impacts, rock removal and pulverizing, solid waste disposal, burning fossil fuels, air and water pollution, and carbon dioxide emissions occur on large scales during every step of the process. This £250bn + wind power industry could be the greatest scam of our age and it will destroy our island.
http://probeinternational.org/library/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/verso-0311B1.pdf
http://alansloman.blogspot.com/2011/03/worth-candle.html?spref=fb -
Lyndsey
commented
I don't think we will be seeing them at Balmoral Kim
Perhaps we ought to write to him. Someone suggested applying for planning for a wind farm on Arthur's Seat - do you think Holyrood might take notice then? Maybe we should apply for Balmoral as well while we are about it!
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Lyndsey
commented
Offshore or onshore. They are still subsidised, uneconomic, unreliable, ruin tourism, polluting, chop up wildlife etc etc etc need I go on?
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David Lane
commented
Put them off-shore where there is wind.
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SarzW
commented
@Bob Roberts - we don't suffer from powerful earthquakes or tsunamis *at the moment*! We do, however, sit on a fault line, and have no control whatsoever over how that will or won't move in the future!
I do agree though that massive wind farms possibly aren't the answer. I don't think massive anything is the answer. Every home in Britain needs to have it's own set-up - ground-source, wind-power, solar, whatever will work in each individual circumstance. Localising makes much more sense than trying to solve this problem on a national scale, IMHO. -
Highlander
commented
Hi Paul. I see you are not from Scotland. We are very proud our country and yet our politicians want to cover, and I do mean cover, the whole of our wild lands with wind factories. Please don't call them wind parks. That insults the people that run the beautiful parks in this country! Yes, you can dismantle them but whether they will is questionnable. Whether these companies will simply liquidate before they have to remove then. When the money runs out! We have seen this before with rig construction. Although they were supposed to be de-commissioned, the rusting hulks are still there and the companies long gone. What you can't do is remove the one thousand tons per turbine concrete bases that effect the watercourses, the hundreds of miles of motorway wide access roads. You cannot control the CO2 that is released after the hundreds of thousands of tons of peat is dug up to allow the roads, the turbine bases, the crane bases, the substations and the power line access to be built. That is there for ever!!! The developers simply say that they will cover them over, You can decommission a nuclear power station. You cannot decommission the ecological damage that building wind farms does. Look on the internet and you will see it for yourself. Go to www.alansloman.blogspot.com and look at the videos and the maps. Come to Scotland and we will take you there. It has reduced men that have worked this land man and boy for a generation and their fathers before them to tears of desparation.
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Paul Taylor
commented
I'm sorry ... I cannot explain why my earlier comments keep repeating. It isn't intentional!!
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Bob Roberts
commented
Wind turbines are not efficient, they are expensive and a blot on the landscape (seascape). Why not use the time and money to perfect tidal flow to generate electricity. The tide comes in and the tide goes out every day. The wind does not blow every day! Quite a number of locations on the UK coastline are suitable for tidal power stations.
I'm sure that nuclear power is safe enough in this country, so if we are expecting to have an abundace of electrical energy on demand, it's the only way to go. We should not be drawing comparisons with the problems in Japan, we don't suffer from severe earthquakes or tsunamis so it should not cloud our thinking or our decision making. If there is a concern as to the safety of nuclear power stations we need only look 20 miles away across the channel to the north coast of France where a number of power station sites exist. -
Paul Taylor
commented
Lyndsey: I did not mean that wind-power would affect petrol prices! I implied that they, like other fossil-fuels, are a finite resource as as such will ultimately become more scarce & costly to extract, therefore this country should be exploiting wind, wave & whatever else becomes available in technology and the sooner the better.
Your costs in terms of running costs are way over the top and I suspect have been gleaned from the corporate perspective. If anyone would like to investigate original-thinking and actual costs associated with this green technology, it would be worth looking at the detailed costs at tranquilityhouses.com
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Lyndsey
commented
Paul, I'm not sure why you are repeating your reply to me that you made 20 days ago. I am beginning to suspect you are employed in the renewables industry.
I wouldn't call wind power 'non-polluting'. I have researched this and I can assure you that if for a second I thought wind power did not add to pollution and was a viable, cost effective form of energy and would save the planet I would support it. Wind is wrong on so many levels. No you can't put back the land as it was before. At a recent exhibition I had it confirmed by the developers that where there are large disturbances of peat turbines may not be carbon neutral for 14 years. Peat lands are made over thousands of years. There are also thousands and thousands of tonnes of concrete (polluting in it's manufacture) used in the bases of the turbines and in the infra structure needed. I have already posted here about the pollution in China that is caused by the mining and production of Neodymium used in the new turbines. People are actually suffering terrible health problems, including cancer, toxic filth is leeching into their farmland so they can't grow crops. Oh yes - did you say wind power was non polluting? Absolute rubbish. Let's spend our money on something that is not adding more to the pollution than it can save, that performs better, that doesn't destroy the beautiful wild land we have and need all over the UK, doesn't kill birds and bats, doesn't divide communities, doesn't ruin our tourist industry, doesn't cause immeasurable stress to the citizens of this country etc etc Paul we will never agree. Do you live near a wind farm? Do you care about the environment? Do you care about what happens in China?
