Sea Wind Farms

[boycott]

How about this for an idea? Also if they can do it in the North Sea why not do it in other sea areas serving a number of nearby countries?

POWER HUB ISLAND
- Could be built by 2027, with wind farms coming later
- Cover an area of 2-2.3 square miles (5-6 square km)
- Provide power to 80 million people
- Cost over £1.3 billion ($1.75 billion)
- The plans have been drawn by a series of energy companies from Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany
- Discussions with other energy companies and industrial partners, who together will pay for the project, are ongoing
- Expected to power homes in Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Norway and Belgium
- Comes with an airstrip, harbour, buildings for housing and workshops, an artificial lake and even a park


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... z53JwjntcE
Also at https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -north-sea

How about combining the North Sea wind farm with Boris Johnson’s Thames Estuary airport.

[boycott]

Why do people travel and look at the old fashioned windmills (as well as the water wheel type) and yet decry modern wind farms, no doubt hundreds of years ago people said not in my backyard go and build it somewhere else its an eyesore!

I do agree that no wind is an issue so power stations still have to be built to cover no wind times.

[Varky]

In Cyprus I live not far from the Orites windfarm just north of Kouklia...and I can tell you that for much of the year, spring through to autumn, the blades barely turn, if at all.

I live on the Paphos side of the aforementioned wind farm and I dispute the statement made by HiC. The days when the blades barely turn are few and far between. In fact I always thought that the road where we live should have been called windy ridge.

HiC also states

Having wind farms around Cyprus is as ridiculous as having solar power arrays in the UK.

Whilst the latter may be true the former, in my opinion, is not.

[LouiseCastricum]

or



Both in The Netherlands : Kinderdijk en Lelystad

[PaphosAL]

Maybe the consultants overseeing the Orites Wind Farm project above Kouklia were using the Coptic Gales forecast tables in order to recommend that the investment would definately pay for itself within five years of being commissioned?

AL

[jagwheels]

This thing we call Earth seems to be fast losing it's natural resources so wind, sea or solar power seems a reasonable option to explore. Perhaps one day
we may have to go back to the "good old days" & have a shared bath once a week, drink milk from the cow that is sharing space with the chickens in our back garden. Better stop there before Devil comes up with a better solution

[Dominic]

I like the wind farms. Like them in the UK, too.

[Ams]

I like the windfarms too, both from a distance and up close (which is pretty cool!). I can see them from my house and they are usually turning.

[smudger]

I'm pretty happy with the wind farms, albeit I don't actually live near any. My only concern is the amount of electricity it takes to power them when there is insufficient wind. Sadly, I don't know the stats on that, but would like to.

[Poppy]

Actually solar power in the UK is not so ridiculous as you might think! When we first came to Northumberland last February we were amazed to see many coastal properties with solar panels but now I know why as we really do have a lot of Sun here! Very rarely do we go more than two days without seeing the sun albeit not quite as hot as Cyprus!!

[Jimgward]

Where I live in Scotland, i can see turbines in every 10degrees of the 360 panorama. We have literally 100's in view. They are a blight and are not cost effective. I happen to know that many farms have been setup years before they are connected to the grid. The grid is woefully inadequate. Without the huge subsidies, they wouldn't be built. We pay a huge slice of our energy costs, in paying mainly French companies, subsidies for wind farms that shouldn't be built.

If you walk anywhere close to these huge turbines, the noise is terrible. Any house within a mile, will be annoyed by the noise.

Most are built in remote locations, where the energy loss in getting to the consumers, is also an issue.

[PaphosAL]

I'm pretty happy with the wind farms, albeit I don't actually live near any. My only concern is the amount of electricity it takes to power them when there is insufficient wind. Sadly, I don't know the stats on that, but would like to.

When the wind dies down, Jacs, the vanes stop rotating and don't use leccy at all. But when the winds get too fierce, like 40 - 80mph Storm Elenour since New Year in UK, they have to shut them down, else they spin themselves off of their mountings. Which is a bit counter-productive for the job in hand, methinks...

Poppy- I think that modern PV panels in UK are more reliant on daylight, rather than direct sunlight (ie: the old solar panels of yesteryear). Many houses around here in UK have new PV panels installations on their roofs facing north, for example...

AL

[jagwheels]

All we need is another Einstein to solve this problem. I think he did with his famous equation but perhaps you canot get owt for nowt

Nice thought though

[Pafos]

How about combining the North Sea wind farm with Boris Johnson’s Thames Estuary airport.

I think you need to rethink that one... there’s a few pretty good reasons you don’t see airports next to wind farms. Also, there are several good reasons the Thames Estuary Airport will never go ahead.

Personally, I find wind farms an eyesore. I also agree that the Orites turbines are often at a standstill.

Wind energy is not considered to be reliable. It is a fluctuating source of energy.
Wind turbines are a potential threat to wildlife such as birds and bats.
Deforestation to set up a wind farm creates an environmental impact.
Noise is a complaint with many wind farms that are close to homes.
The carbon footprint of a wind farm isn’t what you might think. There’s a lot of concrete involved, and they have to be replaced fairly regularly or re-bladed.

[cyprusmax47]

The most important thing is that Wind turbines this size need a minimum wind of 6m/sec to produce at least something and that 24/7!! This condition we don't have in Cyprus! With an wind of 8-10m/s they would perform perfect but then we would have storm warnings...
When the blades turn a bit it is not producing anything decent. The Orites farm was only built to shut the EU up as Cyprus was not doing anything towards renewable energies. But a 80 MW CAPACITY means nothing when there is no wind to use this capacity. You only have to look at the records of EAC how much all of the Wind Farms in CY produce right now and in the past. Also there are records comparing PV and Wind!!

http://www.dsm.org.cy/en//home

Max

[boycott]

Do the power stations in Cyprus and the UK look more desirable than wind turbines?

So the world is going to accept global warming and pollution so that a few birds and bats don't fly into some wind turbines? How many birds and or wild life are actually killed by wind turbines as opposed to cars and pollution?

Of course wind power is not the complete answer to energy production but as we all know fossil fuels will eventually run out so what are the non wind use people going to do then? At least every day/month/year wind is use extends fossil life use.

[WHL]

We have them over here in the East but as HIC has said many times I drive pass them they barely turn for lack of wind..with the amount os Sunshine here maybe Sun power is the way to go? the video below is a massive one, but they have smaller ones in Spain etc, which might be set up here?
https://youtu.be/LMWIgwvbrcM

[smudger]

This is more along the lines I was perusing Al, although I'm sure I've read somewhere that they do use energy to turn the turbines when there is no wind, perhaps the point in this article re making the population think they are actually turning more often they are in reality, who knows. But this certainly makes it clear that the energy that gets to the national grid is nowhere near the amount that they actually produce

http://www.aweo.org/windconsumption.html

[Jimgward]

Nobody can dispute that green energy is the way to go. Eventually tidal energy, alongside solar energy, has to be the future for the earth.

a new type of solar energy from radiation from the sun, will be the future and not be reliant on orientation, nor even sunshine.

In the meantime, warmer countries need to do more solar and more tidal investigations need to happen.

Wind power is hugely inefficient and only ticks the boxes of green production, nothing more. I live in a town where we have two hydro-electric schemes and probably 100 turbines in the boundaries. We are probably the greenest town in the U.K.~, but the wind turbines cost a fortune In Comparison to the hydro. That’s paid itself off many times over.

[Jimgward]

Wind Capacity Factor
The wind capacity factor is the amount of energy produced by a generator as against what it could produce if it functioned all the time at peak capacity, according to Green Tech Media. Wind capacity factor tends to vary from place to place and at different times of the year, even with the same turbines, since it depends on the speed of wind, its density and swept area that depends on the size of the generator points out Open EI. Wind capacity factor can be optimised by choosing places where ideal wind conditions prevail the whole or greater part of the year. So it is important to consider wind capacity factor and the conditions influencing it to maximise power output.

Wind speed below 30 miles per hour produces little energy according to Wind Watch. Even small increases in speed can translate into substantial increase in power generated according to Open EI. Electricity generated is the cube of the wind speed explains Wind EIS.

Air density is more in cooler regions and at sea level than in mountains. So the ideal places with high wind density are seas with colder temperatures according to Open EI. This is one reason for the large scale expansion in off-shore wind generation.

Larger and taller turbines can take advantage of more wind higher above the ground and by the increased span of their blades. Economic considerations therefore become important here.