We need to build tidal power plants, because they're reliable, unlike wind farms. At some times yesterday wind was producing about 2% of power compared to 60% a couple of days earlier.
That's harsh:
Wind is reliable over long periods, it's just not reliable for today or next Thursday. (And, for that matter, tidal is great for knowing you'll get power today... But it won't necessarily be at the time of maximum demand.)
Every kilowatt hour of electricity generated by wind is an mmbru of gas we don't need to import.
But we need to invest in both rather than effectively banning one of them.
Agreed
Wind isn't reliable at all. You can have whole 'bad years' for wind - afaicr 2021 was one. There was certainly one recently.
And you can't have very bad years indeed for (say) gas ?
You can have expensive years for gas, but you don't have an intermittent and unpredictable absence of gas power generation.
We should never have bet on wind, and now that we have, the focus needs to be overwhelmingly on power storage, and incentivising low cost power generation, not people chucking up wind farms the same way that they've chucked up university accommodation - because ultimately it is a Government backed get rich quick scheme.
Has the Ukraine war not caused an intermittent and unpredictable absence of gas power generation?
We need to build tidal power plants, because they're reliable, unlike wind farms. At some times yesterday wind was producing about 2% of power compared to 60% a couple of days earlier.
That's harsh:
Wind is reliable over long periods, it's just not reliable for today or next Thursday. (And, for that matter, tidal is great for knowing you'll get power today... But it won't necessarily be at the time of maximum demand.)
Every kilowatt hour of electricity generated by wind is an mmbru of gas we don't need to import.
This is the key for me. Wind power reduces imports and increases the potential for exports. We are simply not in a position to be pusillanimous about this: go for it, onshore, offshore, whatever. I also think that the massively increased interconnectivity between European countries is doing a lot to solve the battery problem. When the wind blows in the north sea everyone across Europe can burn less gas.
Agreed. Some dated info FWIW: when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks), onshore wind was massively cheaper to produce allowing for all constructions and maintenance costs than anything else (and tidal was FAR more expensive). Offshore wind wasn't bad but the maintenance costs for installations in deep water made it inferior to onshore. These factors may have changed for reasons mentioned elsewhere on the thread and there are externalities to consider such as the impact of access roads, but I doubt if the basic mathematics are all that different.
There was also an EU project which I think still exists as a long-term concept as links are gradually developed - linking energy supply across the continent and across the Med to North Africa, on the basis that you'd almost never get a situation where there was a shortage of wind in Norway and sun in Algeria at the same time. Loss on energy in transit as an issue, but a surprisingly small one. It's the kind of pan-European project where we should be happy to take part regardless of our views on Brexit.
No it isn't. These projects must be subjected to rigorous cost value analysis, and ditched where necessary. The interconnectors to Germany are a ludicrous waste of money when we don't have good interconnectors to Scottish wind farms.
Rigorous cost-value analysis certainly, but one not predetermined by one's views on Brexit. Some arrangements with the neighbours make sense without necessarily having to marry them.
I'm no expert, but surely onshore wind farms should be encouraged, especially in places where they would enhance the scenery rather than be detrimental to it?
Much of Lincolnshire, for example, would look much more interesting if it were covered in turbines.
Something that we don't seem to have in the UK debate is the Danish approach of giving communities a financial incentive to accept wind farms (which is one reason why the country has a huge number of them). If accepting some wind turbines on the horizon meant significantly lower council tax, I wonder whether opposition would persist.
Good morning everyone. An excellent point from @NickPalmer. Our village receives community grants from the local nuclear power station. I see no reason why similar grants shouldn’t be available from wind power producers. We should absolutely be building more onshore wind farms, although the first and second priorities should be offshore wind and tidal. The problem with building onshore wind farms is peat destruction. However, not all high, windy ground is peaty. There are plenty of places that are suitable, and not all need damaging access, especially if built close to existing infrastructure. I accept, however, that I may be in a minority in thinking that the turbines are attractive.
On finding suitable locations this should be easy for the government. Hold a couple of years worth of planning consultations and inquiries before finding that they should all be placed in safe opposition seats.
If you are opposed to onshore wind farms then Putin thanks you for your support.
On a serious note - I haven't seen any actual data about the capacity increase curves for onshore and offshore. That is, how fast either can be built up, and what are the constraints.
Building the massive roads and getting the turbines and blades into position onshore - and the equipment to do that - may well be a serious bottleneck.
Actual information on this is the key - if onshore wind can't be built up faster than offshore, what's the point?
Oppose, because since 15:30 yesterday (28/11) the windfarms havn't produced more than 0.7GW of power, with demand being currently 28GW. If fact they have probably been using more power just to keep the turbines turning.
7 comments in 8 years, is that some kind of record?
I switched from Apple iPhone to Huawei almost 5 years ago. I also got Bose noise cancelling headphones (list price £329) with it. I'm still using it. Its been the best phone I've had so far.
We need to build tidal power plants, because they're reliable, unlike wind farms. At some times yesterday wind was producing about 2% of power compared to 60% a couple of days earlier.
That's harsh:
Wind is reliable over long periods, it's just not reliable for today or next Thursday. (And, for that matter, tidal is great for knowing you'll get power today... But it won't necessarily be at the time of maximum demand.)
Every kilowatt hour of electricity generated by wind is an mmbru of gas we don't need to import.
This is the key for me. Wind power reduces imports and increases the potential for exports. We are simply not in a position to be pusillanimous about this: go for it, onshore, offshore, whatever. I also think that the massively increased interconnectivity between European countries is doing a lot to solve the battery problem. When the wind blows in the north sea everyone across Europe can burn less gas.
Agreed. Some dated info FWIW: when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks), onshore wind was massively cheaper to produce allowing for all constructions and maintenance costs than anything else (and tidal was FAR more expensive). Offshore wind wasn't bad but the maintenance costs for installations in deep water made it inferior to onshore. These factors may have changed for reasons mentioned elsewhere on the thread and there are externalities to consider such as the impact of access roads, but I doubt if the basic mathematics are all that different.
There was also an EU project which I think still exists as a long-term concept as links are gradually developed - linking energy supply across the continent and across the Med to North Africa, on the basis that you'd almost never get a situation where there was a shortage of wind in Norway and sun in Algeria at the same time. Loss on energy in transit as an issue, but a surprisingly small one. It's the kind of pan-European project where we should be happy to take part regardless of our views on Brexit.
No it isn't. These projects must be subjected to rigorous cost value analysis, and ditched where necessary. The interconnectors to Germany are a ludicrous waste of money when we don't have good interconnectors to Scottish wind farms.
Rigorous cost-value analysis certainly, but one not predetermined by one's views on Brexit. Some arrangements with the neighbours make sense without necessarily having to marry them.
Interconnectors are like ports - they give us the ability to import/export.
More is better and more flexible. What we need is more diversity of supply.
It should be noted that the interconnectors to France are saving their bacon at the moment. What happens to my neighbour will happen to me, eventually....
Oppose, because since 15:30 yesterday (28/11) the windfarms havn't produced more than 0.7GW of power, with demand being currently 28GW. If fact they have probably been using more power just to keep the turbines turning.
7 comments in 8 years, is that some kind of record?
If you are opposed to onshore wind farms then Putin thanks you for your support.
On a serious note - I haven't seen any actual data about the capacity increase curves for onshore and offshore. That is, how fast either can be built up, and what are the constraints.
Building the massive roads and getting the turbines and blades into position onshore - and the equipment to do that - may well be a serious bottleneck.
Actual information on this is the key - if onshore wind can't be built up faster than offshore, what's the point?
Yes: I'm not opposed to onshore wind on principle, but the opportunity there looks to me like chipping away at the edges: we aren't going to suddenly being onshore a massive windfarm like the Dogger Field which will be like bringing a Drax onstream. That's not to say we shouldn't chip away at the edges too, where in the spirit of 'every little helps'. I'm sure there are hundreds of small easy wins. But there isn't a big bang to be had there.
On which note, November has been a bit disappointing for wind on gridwatch. I'm sure we've had more wind than that, though it's very still today.
If you are opposed to onshore wind farms then Putin thanks you for your support.
On a serious note - I haven't seen any actual data about the capacity increase curves for onshore and offshore. That is, how fast either can be built up, and what are the constraints.
Building the massive roads and getting the turbines and blades into position onshore - and the equipment to do that - may well be a serious bottleneck.
Actual information on this is the key - if onshore wind can't be built up faster than offshore, what's the point?
Yes: I'm not opposed to onshore wind on principle, but the opportunity there looks to me like chipping away at the edges: we aren't going to suddenly being onshore a massive windfarm like the Dogger Field which will be like bringing a Drax onstream. That's not to say we shouldn't chip away at the edges too, where in the spirit of 'every little helps'. I'm sure there are hundreds of small easy wins. But there isn't a big bang to be had there.
On which note, November has been a bit disappointing for wind on gridwatch. I'm sure we've had more wind than that, though it's very still today.
One thing the media are rubbish at getting across is scale - a surprising number of people ask questions like "why can't we just bring back the old water mills to power industry". Not realising that most watermills generated less than 5hp.
Something that we don't seem to have in the UK debate is the Danish approach of giving communities a financial incentive to accept wind farms (which is one reason why the country has a huge number of them). If accepting some wind turbines on the horizon meant significantly lower council tax, I wonder whether opposition would persist.
I think the Scottish government say that windfarms should donate £5,000 to the local communities for every MW generated. I don't think it's the law though - just a 'should'.
Oppose, because since 15:30 yesterday (28/11) the windfarms havn't produced more than 0.7GW of power, with demand being currently 28GW. If fact they have probably been using more power just to keep the turbines turning.
We can use onshore windfarms to massively reduce our dependence on imported gas to generate electricity some but not all of the time.
If you are opposed to onshore wind farms then Putin thanks you for your support.
On a serious note - I haven't seen any actual data about the capacity increase curves for onshore and offshore. That is, how fast either can be built up, and what are the constraints.
Building the massive roads and getting the turbines and blades into position onshore - and the equipment to do that - may well be a serious bottleneck.
Actual information on this is the key - if onshore wind can't be built up faster than offshore, what's the point?
Yes: I'm not opposed to onshore wind on principle, but the opportunity there looks to me like chipping away at the edges: we aren't going to suddenly being onshore a massive windfarm like the Dogger Field which will be like bringing a Drax onstream. That's not to say we shouldn't chip away at the edges too, where in the spirit of 'every little helps'. I'm sure there are hundreds of small easy wins. But there isn't a big bang to be had there.
On which note, November has been a bit disappointing for wind on gridwatch. I'm sure we've had more wind than that, though it's very still today.
The planning laws are an ass. I got approval to replace a crumbling garage with an annexe. And then sought a change to put panels on the roof. And was made to start the approval process from scratch, at full time and cost.
Something that we don't seem to have in the UK debate is the Danish approach of giving communities a financial incentive to accept wind farms (which is one reason why the country has a huge number of them). If accepting some wind turbines on the horizon meant significantly lower council tax, I wonder whether opposition would persist.
If a group of local NIMBIES are going to be allowed to stand in the way of a policy for which the benefits to the UK are manifest, then they should pay significantly higher council tax, and the cash raised should be passed on to all local authorities except for the one where the NIMBIES happen to live. I doubt whether opposition would persist.
While there has been some opposition to the offshore expansion of the Rampion wind farm off the Sussex coast, most of the debate has been about how the onshore bits get connected to the grid. This is the challenge with both offshore and onshore wind - ideally you want to build it as near to the people who will be using the power, and that’s where NIMBYs enter the frame. Personally I enjoy seeing the lights twinkling on the horizon - and marvel that Rampion 2 will be taller than the Eiffel Tower (though further out to sea). Try installing that on land!
If you are opposed to onshore wind farms then Putin thanks you for your support.
On a serious note - I haven't seen any actual data about the capacity increase curves for onshore and offshore. That is, how fast either can be built up, and what are the constraints.
Building the massive roads and getting the turbines and blades into position onshore - and the equipment to do that - may well be a serious bottleneck.
Actual information on this is the key - if onshore wind can't be built up faster than offshore, what's the point?
Yes: I'm not opposed to onshore wind on principle, but the opportunity there looks to me like chipping away at the edges: we aren't going to suddenly being onshore a massive windfarm like the Dogger Field which will be like bringing a Drax onstream. That's not to say we shouldn't chip away at the edges too, where in the spirit of 'every little helps'. I'm sure there are hundreds of small easy wins. But there isn't a big bang to be had there.
On which note, November has been a bit disappointing for wind on gridwatch. I'm sure we've had more wind than that, though it's very still today.
Agree re onshore: I'm not opposed but it's not going to be significant compared to offshore.
Regarding the November's poor wind performance, does anyone know how reliably the tides have been running? Just asking.
While there has been some opposition to the offshore expansion of the Rampion wind farm off the Sussex coast, most of the debate has been about how the onshore bits get connected to the grid. This is the challenge with both offshore and onshore wind - ideally you want to build it as near to the people who will be using the power, and that’s where NIMBYs enter the frame. Personally I enjoy seeing the lights twinkling on the horizon - and marvel that Rampion 2 will be taller than the Eiffel Tower (though further out to sea). Try installing that on land!
One of the things I have always wondered in the case of wind farms is whether bigger is better. Does a 600ft tall turbine generate twice as much energy as 2x 300ft turbines?
Oppose, because since 15:30 yesterday (28/11) the windfarms havn't produced more than 0.7GW of power, with demand being currently 28GW. If fact they have probably been using more power just to keep the turbines turning.
7 comments in 8 years, is that some kind of record?
Quality not quantity, mate.
If only: "...they have probably been using more power just to keep the turbines turning."
We need to build tidal power plants, because they're reliable, unlike wind farms. At some times yesterday wind was producing about 2% of power compared to 60% a couple of days earlier.
That's harsh:
Wind is reliable over long periods, it's just not reliable for today or next Thursday. (And, for that matter, tidal is great for knowing you'll get power today... But it won't necessarily be at the time of maximum demand.)
Every kilowatt hour of electricity generated by wind is an mmbru of gas we don't need to import.
But we need to invest in both rather than effectively banning one of them.
As the saying goes: it's very rare that there's a silver bullet. But there's usually silver buckshot.
Tidal, because of predictability, needs little or no storage.
In addition, depending how it is designed and built, it can actually act as storage for other generation sources - pump extra water into the ponds.
Can we all finally agree that the multiple governments who passed on even experimenting with tidal power were muppets?
The problem seems to be a combination of the following
1) Big Project Syndrome. Wind farms scale from on turbine etc 2) which leads into the “needs 2 decades of planning enquiries” thing. Some people believe this is a moral right. The anger produced by the streamlining of onshore wind applications and those for small power storage is amusing. 3) Persistent opposition in the permanent government apparatus. Dr Palmer tells us if a report on the cost of tidal, which he saw as an MP. If it the same report I have seen, it is based on a number of untruths about tidal. So for decades, both Labour and Conservative governments have been told debatable facts by the… experts.
Last I head, the IOW scheme is still heading for a 2025 start date, if still with lots of hurdles to jump.
One thing I would like to see with wind turbines is the adoption of the system of painting one of the blades black. Studies have shown this reduces bird strikes by up to 70%. Seems a simple and effective answer with not too much in the way of additional cost.
While there has been some opposition to the offshore expansion of the Rampion wind farm off the Sussex coast, most of the debate has been about how the onshore bits get connected to the grid. This is the challenge with both offshore and onshore wind - ideally you want to build it as near to the people who will be using the power, and that’s where NIMBYs enter the frame. Personally I enjoy seeing the lights twinkling on the horizon - and marvel that Rampion 2 will be taller than the Eiffel Tower (though further out to sea). Try installing that on land!
One of the things I have always wondered in the case of wind farms is whether bigger is better. Does a 600ft tall turbine generate twice as much energy as 2x 300ft turbines?
Yes. It's a better than linear scale with size iirc.
While there has been some opposition to the offshore expansion of the Rampion wind farm off the Sussex coast, most of the debate has been about how the onshore bits get connected to the grid. This is the challenge with both offshore and onshore wind - ideally you want to build it as near to the people who will be using the power, and that’s where NIMBYs enter the frame. Personally I enjoy seeing the lights twinkling on the horizon - and marvel that Rampion 2 will be taller than the Eiffel Tower (though further out to sea). Try installing that on land!
One of the things I have always wondered in the case of wind farms is whether bigger is better. Does a 600ft tall turbine generate twice as much energy as 2x 300ft turbines?
While there has been some opposition to the offshore expansion of the Rampion wind farm off the Sussex coast, most of the debate has been about how the onshore bits get connected to the grid. This is the challenge with both offshore and onshore wind - ideally you want to build it as near to the people who will be using the power, and that’s where NIMBYs enter the frame. Personally I enjoy seeing the lights twinkling on the horizon - and marvel that Rampion 2 will be taller than the Eiffel Tower (though further out to sea). Try installing that on land!
One of the things I have always wondered in the case of wind farms is whether bigger is better. Does a 600ft tall turbine generate twice as much energy as 2x 300ft turbines?
IIRC the larger the turbine, the greater overall efficiency - they haven't reached the point where, inevitably, this will stop being true. Yet.
Much of that is to do with basic propellor theory, I believe - the prefect propellor has infinite area, is infinitely large and turns infinitely slowly.
While there has been some opposition to the offshore expansion of the Rampion wind farm off the Sussex coast, most of the debate has been about how the onshore bits get connected to the grid. This is the challenge with both offshore and onshore wind - ideally you want to build it as near to the people who will be using the power, and that’s where NIMBYs enter the frame. Personally I enjoy seeing the lights twinkling on the horizon - and marvel that Rampion 2 will be taller than the Eiffel Tower (though further out to sea). Try installing that on land!
One of the things I have always wondered in the case of wind farms is whether bigger is better. Does a 600ft tall turbine generate twice as much energy as 2x 300ft turbines?
IIRC the larger the turbine, the greater overall efficiency - they haven't reached the point where, inevitably, this will stop being true. Yet.
Much of that is to do with basic propellor theory, I believe - the prefect propellor has infinite area, is infinitely large and turns infinitely slowly.
While there has been some opposition to the offshore expansion of the Rampion wind farm off the Sussex coast, most of the debate has been about how the onshore bits get connected to the grid. This is the challenge with both offshore and onshore wind - ideally you want to build it as near to the people who will be using the power, and that’s where NIMBYs enter the frame. Personally I enjoy seeing the lights twinkling on the horizon - and marvel that Rampion 2 will be taller than the Eiffel Tower (though further out to sea). Try installing that on land!
One of the things I have always wondered in the case of wind farms is whether bigger is better. Does a 600ft tall turbine generate twice as much energy as 2x 300ft turbines?
IIRC the larger the turbine, the greater overall efficiency - they haven't reached the point where, inevitably, this will stop being true. Yet.
Much of that is to do with basic propellor theory, I believe - the prefect propellor has infinite area, is infinitely large and turns infinitely slowly.
However: I also believe that there are literal downstream effects: if a turbine is in the wake of another, then it is less efficient. And larger turbines disturb more air.
While there has been some opposition to the offshore expansion of the Rampion wind farm off the Sussex coast, most of the debate has been about how the onshore bits get connected to the grid. This is the challenge with both offshore and onshore wind - ideally you want to build it as near to the people who will be using the power, and that’s where NIMBYs enter the frame. Personally I enjoy seeing the lights twinkling on the horizon - and marvel that Rampion 2 will be taller than the Eiffel Tower (though further out to sea). Try installing that on land!
One of the things I have always wondered in the case of wind farms is whether bigger is better. Does a 600ft tall turbine generate twice as much energy as 2x 300ft turbines?
IIRC the larger the turbine, the greater overall efficiency - they haven't reached the point where, inevitably, this will stop being true. Yet.
Much of that is to do with basic propellor theory, I believe - the prefect propellor has infinite area, is infinitely large and turns infinitely slowly.
However: I also believe that there are literal downstream effects: if a turbine is in the wake of another, then it is less efficient. And larger turbines disturb more air.
IIRC (again), the turbulence effected *area* doesn't scale linearly with the power of the turbine. You get more power per affected area with bigger.
Oppose, because since 15:30 yesterday (28/11) the windfarms havn't produced more than 0.7GW of power, with demand being currently 28GW. If fact they have probably been using more power just to keep the turbines turning.
7 comments in 8 years, is that some kind of record?
Quality not quantity, mate.
If only: "...they have probably been using more power just to keep the turbines turning."
Surely what we should do on excessively windy days is simply pipe the excess energy to turbines far, far away, which are then turned by that energy to generate wind which arrives with us a few days later on what would otherwise be a calm day and can be harvested by our turbines again?
While there has been some opposition to the offshore expansion of the Rampion wind farm off the Sussex coast, most of the debate has been about how the onshore bits get connected to the grid. This is the challenge with both offshore and onshore wind - ideally you want to build it as near to the people who will be using the power, and that’s where NIMBYs enter the frame. Personally I enjoy seeing the lights twinkling on the horizon - and marvel that Rampion 2 will be taller than the Eiffel Tower (though further out to sea). Try installing that on land!
To be fair, all offshore wind is further out to sea than the Eiffel Tower (unless climate change induced sea level rise has taken a greater toll on France than I'd realised).
ETA: The Spinnaker Tower has always looked to me like it should be some kind of vertical axis wind turbine.
While there has been some opposition to the offshore expansion of the Rampion wind farm off the Sussex coast, most of the debate has been about how the onshore bits get connected to the grid. This is the challenge with both offshore and onshore wind - ideally you want to build it as near to the people who will be using the power, and that’s where NIMBYs enter the frame. Personally I enjoy seeing the lights twinkling on the horizon - and marvel that Rampion 2 will be taller than the Eiffel Tower (though further out to sea). Try installing that on land!
One of the things I have always wondered in the case of wind farms is whether bigger is better. Does a 600ft tall turbine generate twice as much energy as 2x 300ft turbines?
I always blow the minds of people when I tell them you get more pizza with one 15 inch pizza than with 2 lots of 10 inch pizzas.
On renewable power in general you probably want to do it europe wide (And probably north africa as well) as the larger geographical area that's covered the more opportunity for wind, solar etc. So large interconnectors and agreements with our european neighbours should be generally beneficial. Also gas storage is important in the medium term for us. (Nuclear and significant tidal are longer term solutions as they take a while to build)
While there has been some opposition to the offshore expansion of the Rampion wind farm off the Sussex coast, most of the debate has been about how the onshore bits get connected to the grid. This is the challenge with both offshore and onshore wind - ideally you want to build it as near to the people who will be using the power, and that’s where NIMBYs enter the frame. Personally I enjoy seeing the lights twinkling on the horizon - and marvel that Rampion 2 will be taller than the Eiffel Tower (though further out to sea). Try installing that on land!
One of the things I have always wondered in the case of wind farms is whether bigger is better. Does a 600ft tall turbine generate twice as much energy as 2x 300ft turbines?
I always blow the minds of people when I tell them you get more pizza with one 15 inch pizza than with 2 lots of 10 inch pizzas.
I'm all in favour of onshore wind farms, but I don't know how much we'll actually need them. Once Doggerbank, Hornsea, East Anglia Three and others are completed the UK will have a huge amount of energy coming from wind turbines. Supply and cost is not going to be a problem for much longer, certainly by the 2030s the UK should have sufficient renewable electricity supply. What we do need is enery storage or clean alternatives to wind. That's the problem to crack IMHO, not arguing about the merits of onshore or offshore wind farms.
While there has been some opposition to the offshore expansion of the Rampion wind farm off the Sussex coast, most of the debate has been about how the onshore bits get connected to the grid. This is the challenge with both offshore and onshore wind - ideally you want to build it as near to the people who will be using the power, and that’s where NIMBYs enter the frame. Personally I enjoy seeing the lights twinkling on the horizon - and marvel that Rampion 2 will be taller than the Eiffel Tower (though further out to sea). Try installing that on land!
One of the things I have always wondered in the case of wind farms is whether bigger is better. Does a 600ft tall turbine generate twice as much energy as 2x 300ft turbines?
I always blow the minds of people when I tell them you get more pizza with one 15 inch pizza than with 2 lots of 10 inch pizzas.
Although if you want a strong climax on the organ a four foot horn is better than a 16 foot one.
At least, so I'm told. Obviously I've only got a 16 foot horn so I've never found out.
While there has been some opposition to the offshore expansion of the Rampion wind farm off the Sussex coast, most of the debate has been about how the onshore bits get connected to the grid. This is the challenge with both offshore and onshore wind - ideally you want to build it as near to the people who will be using the power, and that’s where NIMBYs enter the frame. Personally I enjoy seeing the lights twinkling on the horizon - and marvel that Rampion 2 will be taller than the Eiffel Tower (though further out to sea). Try installing that on land!
One of the things I have always wondered in the case of wind farms is whether bigger is better. Does a 600ft tall turbine generate twice as much energy as 2x 300ft turbines?
I always blow the minds of people when I tell them you get more pizza with one 15 inch pizza than with 2 lots of 10 inch pizzas.
I always find it frustrating that people don't get the square and cube rules and are always amazed that some small things can jump relatively high distances, or that sparrows can have very thin legs or elephants can't jump or that cats can fall off windowsills unharmed yet we break bones, etc, etc and don't get that it is just an obvious function of mathematics/physics.
While there has been some opposition to the offshore expansion of the Rampion wind farm off the Sussex coast, most of the debate has been about how the onshore bits get connected to the grid. This is the challenge with both offshore and onshore wind - ideally you want to build it as near to the people who will be using the power, and that’s where NIMBYs enter the frame. Personally I enjoy seeing the lights twinkling on the horizon - and marvel that Rampion 2 will be taller than the Eiffel Tower (though further out to sea). Try installing that on land!
One of the things I have always wondered in the case of wind farms is whether bigger is better. Does a 600ft tall turbine generate twice as much energy as 2x 300ft turbines?
I always blow the minds of people when I tell them you get more pizza with one 15 inch pizza than with 2 lots of 10 inch pizzas.
I always find it frustrating that people don't get the square and cube rules and are always amazed that small things can jump relatively high distances, or that sparrows have very thin legs or elephants can't jump or that cats can fall off windowsills unharmed yet we break bones, etc, etc and don't get that it is just a function an obvious of mathematics/physics.
Unfortunately, a lot of them were brought up to believe it was ok to "not do" maths and science.
While there has been some opposition to the offshore expansion of the Rampion wind farm off the Sussex coast, most of the debate has been about how the onshore bits get connected to the grid. This is the challenge with both offshore and onshore wind - ideally you want to build it as near to the people who will be using the power, and that’s where NIMBYs enter the frame. Personally I enjoy seeing the lights twinkling on the horizon - and marvel that Rampion 2 will be taller than the Eiffel Tower (though further out to sea). Try installing that on land!
One of the things I have always wondered in the case of wind farms is whether bigger is better. Does a 600ft tall turbine generate twice as much energy as 2x 300ft turbines?
IIRC the larger the turbine, the greater overall efficiency - they haven't reached the point where, inevitably, this will stop being true. Yet.
Much of that is to do with basic propellor theory, I believe - the prefect propellor has infinite area, is infinitely large and turns infinitely slowly.
However: I also believe that there are literal downstream effects: if a turbine is in the wake of another, then it is less efficient. And larger turbines disturb more air.
IIRC (again), the turbulence effected *area* doesn't scale linearly with the power of the turbine. You get more power per affected area with bigger.
This describes how there are fundamental limits in what can be generated from a given area, though. The problem is that areas which are shallow enough, have good wind patterns, and are not conservation zones, are quite limited in total area. (Of course, the development of cost-efficient floating platforms would open up a massive additional resource.)
https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1755489/eu-offshore-wind-trade-off-density-efficiency ...After a long consultation with shipping, fishing, military and ecological organisations, the Netherlands concluded there is so little space in the crowded North Sea that they need to cram more wind turbines into the available space. They can increase the energy yield of a wind farm by 50% if they put double the amount of turbines into its allotted space. Doing this, however, means individual turbines would not run to maximum efficiency because they would sit too squarely within the wakes of other turbines. Wake losses are expected to rise by about 30%.
"We are not really in favour of that," Hans Timmers, chief executive of the Netherlands’ Wind Energy Association, told Windpower Monthly when the plans were published. But it was necessary, he said, to protect nature.
"At the moment they're looking to the easiest parts of the North Sea to accelerate building," he said. "But when you get to the big roll-out later in the century, we have to look to the nature areas and the Natura 2000 areas [protected under EU law] as well. Natura 2000 is the big issue."
The Netherlands' new target, to double offshore wind to 21.5GW by 2030, will see a six-fold increase in the country's offshore wind capacity. By 2050, it wants to grow to 70GW.
"My feeling is that this doubling of our targets for 2030 is already on the limits of what is achievable," said Emile van Druten, who advises the Dutch government on nature-inclusive designs for offshore wind farms, on behalf of engineering consultancy WitteveenBos.
The Dutch plan will see turbines installed in its extra offshore wind areas at a density of about 10MW/km² – the limit of what was feasible.
"If you go higher, then the wake losses really start increasing," said Druten. Dutch North Sea wind farms already run, on average, at 6MW/km², the limit of what is considered required for optimum efficiency. EU and US offshore forecasters have typically assumed an optimum density of about 3.4MW/km².
At that latter rate though, Europe could not meet its wind targets without building in protected Natura 2000 areas, because only about 3% of the North Sea available for constructing wind farms was actually suitable, WitteveenBos concluded in a 2019 study for a Dutch-Danish offshore initiative. The report assumed that waters deeper than 55 metres would require floating turbines, which it expected would still be significantly more expensive than turbines on fixed-bottom foundations by around the year 2030...
While there has been some opposition to the offshore expansion of the Rampion wind farm off the Sussex coast, most of the debate has been about how the onshore bits get connected to the grid. This is the challenge with both offshore and onshore wind - ideally you want to build it as near to the people who will be using the power, and that’s where NIMBYs enter the frame. Personally I enjoy seeing the lights twinkling on the horizon - and marvel that Rampion 2 will be taller than the Eiffel Tower (though further out to sea). Try installing that on land!
One of the things I have always wondered in the case of wind farms is whether bigger is better. Does a 600ft tall turbine generate twice as much energy as 2x 300ft turbines?
I always blow the minds of people when I tell them you get more pizza with one 15 inch pizza than with 2 lots of 10 inch pizzas.
I always find it frustrating that people don't get the square and cube rules and are always amazed that some small things can jump relatively high distances, or that sparrows can have very thin legs or elephants can't jump or that cats can fall off windowsills unharmed yet we break bones, etc, etc and don't get that it is just an obvious function of mathematics/physics.
Dropping mammals down lift shafts: a mouse lives, a rat dies, a man breaks, a horse splashes.
I'm all in favour of onshore wind farms, but I don't know how much we'll actually need them. Once Doggerbank, Hornsea, East Anglia Three and others are completed the UK will have a huge amount of energy coming from wind turbines. Supply and cost is not going to be a problem for much longer, certainly by the 2030s the UK should have sufficient renewable electricity supply. What we do need is enery storage or clean alternatives to wind. That's the problem to crack IMHO, not arguing about the merits of onshore or offshore wind farms.
We should also be looking to generate an exportable surplus, though.
While there has been some opposition to the offshore expansion of the Rampion wind farm off the Sussex coast, most of the debate has been about how the onshore bits get connected to the grid. This is the challenge with both offshore and onshore wind - ideally you want to build it as near to the people who will be using the power, and that’s where NIMBYs enter the frame. Personally I enjoy seeing the lights twinkling on the horizon - and marvel that Rampion 2 will be taller than the Eiffel Tower (though further out to sea). Try installing that on land!
One of the things I have always wondered in the case of wind farms is whether bigger is better. Does a 600ft tall turbine generate twice as much energy as 2x 300ft turbines?
I always blow the minds of people when I tell them you get more pizza with one 15 inch pizza than with 2 lots of 10 inch pizzas.
I always find it frustrating that people don't get the square and cube rules and are always amazed that small things can jump relatively high distances, or that sparrows have very thin legs or elephants can't jump or that cats can fall off windowsills unharmed yet we break bones, etc, etc and don't get that it is just a function an obvious of mathematics/physics.
Scale/power/size stuff isn't very well taught.
I was told that one reason that a number of early electric cars were crushed by the manufacturers rather than left on the open market was that idiots started modding them, killed or horribly injured themselves with massive electric shocks and sued for vast sums.
If the whole line is recalled and destroyed the car company no longer has to pay for the insurance against this.
All because people don't understand the difference between an AA battery and a toy motor and a literal quarter ton storage battery....
On renewable power in general you probably want to do it europe wide (And probably north africa as well) as the larger geographical area that's covered the more opportunity for wind, solar etc. So large interconnectors and agreements with our european neighbours should be generally beneficial. Also gas storage is important in the medium term for us. (Nuclear and significant tidal are longer term solutions as they take a while to build)
All good points. Significant capacity continental scale interconnects make renewables much more efficient (though Europe still remains one of the worst major economic regions from the point of view of renewables intermittency). Interconnects with North Africa could significantly alleviate the intermittency problem.
Storage is also part of the solution, and 24 hour storage is already economic to some extent - but the cost of providing electricity storage for the infrequent but inevitable periods of around two weeks with very low wind across the entire European continent will be prohibitive for the foreseeable future.
If you are opposed to onshore wind farms then Putin thanks you for your support.
On a serious note - I haven't seen any actual data about the capacity increase curves for onshore and offshore. That is, how fast either can be built up, and what are the constraints.
Building the massive roads and getting the turbines and blades into position onshore - and the equipment to do that - may well be a serious bottleneck.
Actual information on this is the key - if onshore wind can't be built up faster than offshore, what's the point?
But onshore is easier to maintain - you can just drive up to it, unlike maintaining an offshore turbine in a North Sea swell.
If you are opposed to onshore wind farms then Putin thanks you for your support.
On a serious note - I haven't seen any actual data about the capacity increase curves for onshore and offshore. That is, how fast either can be built up, and what are the constraints.
Building the massive roads and getting the turbines and blades into position onshore - and the equipment to do that - may well be a serious bottleneck.
Actual information on this is the key - if onshore wind can't be built up faster than offshore, what's the point?
But onshore is easier to maintain - you can just drive up to it, unlike maintaining an offshore turbine in a North Sea swell.
Replacing heavy items might well be easier at sea. Getting a heavy lift crane up a hill - joy joy joy all the way....
These days, they are offering dynamic positioning cranes for maritime work. The boat may rock and roll a bit, but the load is moved steadily and smoothly (mostly).
While there has been some opposition to the offshore expansion of the Rampion wind farm off the Sussex coast, most of the debate has been about how the onshore bits get connected to the grid. This is the challenge with both offshore and onshore wind - ideally you want to build it as near to the people who will be using the power, and that’s where NIMBYs enter the frame. Personally I enjoy seeing the lights twinkling on the horizon - and marvel that Rampion 2 will be taller than the Eiffel Tower (though further out to sea). Try installing that on land!
One of the things I have always wondered in the case of wind farms is whether bigger is better. Does a 600ft tall turbine generate twice as much energy as 2x 300ft turbines?
I always blow the minds of people when I tell them you get more pizza with one 15 inch pizza than with 2 lots of 10 inch pizzas.
177 vs 157 sq in.
You get a hell of a lot more if you order the 381mm pizza instead: 114009 sq mm!
While there has been some opposition to the offshore expansion of the Rampion wind farm off the Sussex coast, most of the debate has been about how the onshore bits get connected to the grid. This is the challenge with both offshore and onshore wind - ideally you want to build it as near to the people who will be using the power, and that’s where NIMBYs enter the frame. Personally I enjoy seeing the lights twinkling on the horizon - and marvel that Rampion 2 will be taller than the Eiffel Tower (though further out to sea). Try installing that on land!
One of the things I have always wondered in the case of wind farms is whether bigger is better. Does a 600ft tall turbine generate twice as much energy as 2x 300ft turbines?
I always blow the minds of people when I tell them you get more pizza with one 15 inch pizza than with 2 lots of 10 inch pizzas.
I don't want to be rude about your friends but their minds are obviously blown fairly easily. On a point of unnecessary pedantry, do you get 15" pizzas? You often see 14" ones because they use twice the dough of a 10" one to make the base so it's the natural large size to make. I worked in a pizza restaurant for years so naturally consider myself an expert on all things in this area. Ham and pineapple was available.
While there has been some opposition to the offshore expansion of the Rampion wind farm off the Sussex coast, most of the debate has been about how the onshore bits get connected to the grid. This is the challenge with both offshore and onshore wind - ideally you want to build it as near to the people who will be using the power, and that’s where NIMBYs enter the frame. Personally I enjoy seeing the lights twinkling on the horizon - and marvel that Rampion 2 will be taller than the Eiffel Tower (though further out to sea). Try installing that on land!
One of the things I have always wondered in the case of wind farms is whether bigger is better. Does a 600ft tall turbine generate twice as much energy as 2x 300ft turbines?
I always blow the minds of people when I tell them you get more pizza with one 15 inch pizza than with 2 lots of 10 inch pizzas.
I don't want to be rude about your friends but their minds are obviously blown fairly easily. On a point of unnecessary pedantry, do you get 15" pizzas? You often see 14" ones because they use twice the dough of a 10" one to make the base so it's the natural large size to make. I worked in a pizza restaurant for years so naturally consider myself an expert on all things in this area. Ham and pineapple was available.
While there has been some opposition to the offshore expansion of the Rampion wind farm off the Sussex coast, most of the debate has been about how the onshore bits get connected to the grid. This is the challenge with both offshore and onshore wind - ideally you want to build it as near to the people who will be using the power, and that’s where NIMBYs enter the frame. Personally I enjoy seeing the lights twinkling on the horizon - and marvel that Rampion 2 will be taller than the Eiffel Tower (though further out to sea). Try installing that on land!
One of the things I have always wondered in the case of wind farms is whether bigger is better. Does a 600ft tall turbine generate twice as much energy as 2x 300ft turbines?
I always blow the minds of people when I tell them you get more pizza with one 15 inch pizza than with 2 lots of 10 inch pizzas.
I don't want to be rude about your friends but their minds are obviously blown fairly easily. On a point of unnecessary pedantry, do you get 15" pizzas? You often see 14" ones because they use twice the dough of a 10" one to make the base so it's the natural large size to make. I worked in a pizza restaurant for years so naturally consider myself an expert on all things in this area. Ham and pineapple was available.
12" and 16" are paired for the same reason.
Yes I suppose this is the 2020s version of the 10/14 from the 1990s. And we wonder where our obesity problem has come from!
We need to build tidal power plants, because they're reliable, unlike wind farms. At some times yesterday wind was producing about 2% of power compared to 60% a couple of days earlier.
That's harsh:
Wind is reliable over long periods, it's just not reliable for today or next Thursday. (And, for that matter, tidal is great for knowing you'll get power today... But it won't necessarily be at the time of maximum demand.)
Every kilowatt hour of electricity generated by wind is an mmbru of gas we don't need to import.
This is the key for me. Wind power reduces imports and increases the potential for exports. We are simply not in a position to be pusillanimous about this: go for it, onshore, offshore, whatever. I also think that the massively increased interconnectivity between European countries is doing a lot to solve the battery problem. When the wind blows in the north sea everyone across Europe can burn less gas.
Agreed. Some dated info FWIW: when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks), onshore wind was massively cheaper to produce allowing for all constructions and maintenance costs than anything else (and tidal was FAR more expensive). Offshore wind wasn't bad but the maintenance costs for installations in deep water made it inferior to onshore. These factors may have changed for reasons mentioned elsewhere on the thread and there are externalities to consider such as the impact of access roads, but I doubt if the basic mathematics are all that different.
There was also an EU project which I think still exists as a long-term concept as links are gradually developed - linking energy supply across the continent and across the Med to North Africa, on the basis that you'd almost never get a situation where there was a shortage of wind in Norway and sun in Algeria at the same time. Loss on energy in transit as an issue, but a surprisingly small one. It's the kind of pan-European project where we should be happy to take part regardless of our views on Brexit.
No it isn't. These projects must be subjected to rigorous cost value analysis, and ditched where necessary. The interconnectors to Germany are a ludicrous waste of money when we don't have good interconnectors to Scottish wind farms.
The biggest mistake that all Uk governments have made for a generation is the Treasury obsession with “value for money”
Of course we should make sure that what we decide to do is built in the most cost effective manner
But something like interconnectors to Germany has strategic value
Unless you like Germany being dependent on Russia for some strange reason?
While there has been some opposition to the offshore expansion of the Rampion wind farm off the Sussex coast, most of the debate has been about how the onshore bits get connected to the grid. This is the challenge with both offshore and onshore wind - ideally you want to build it as near to the people who will be using the power, and that’s where NIMBYs enter the frame. Personally I enjoy seeing the lights twinkling on the horizon - and marvel that Rampion 2 will be taller than the Eiffel Tower (though further out to sea). Try installing that on land!
One of the things I have always wondered in the case of wind farms is whether bigger is better. Does a 600ft tall turbine generate twice as much energy as 2x 300ft turbines?
I always blow the minds of people when I tell them you get more pizza with one 15 inch pizza than with 2 lots of 10 inch pizzas.
I always find it frustrating that people don't get the square and cube rules and are always amazed that some small things can jump relatively high distances, or that sparrows can have very thin legs or elephants can't jump or that cats can fall off windowsills unharmed yet we break bones, etc, etc and don't get that it is just an obvious function of mathematics/physics.
Dropping mammals down lift shafts: a mouse lives, a rat dies, a man breaks, a horse splashes.
JBS Haldane
Had never heard of him. Looked him up. I'm guessing from his impressive Wikipedia page he knew why.
Can we bury the hatchet on yesterday please? I suspect we got carried away and were dancing on a pinhead. I got annoyed by your first response which came over to me as anti science, which I am guessing is far from the truth. I do have a thing re the average person's failure to appreciate science and the complete lack of interest in why stuff happens (I give my example of the cube rule just discussed). I find it particularly prevalent in the humanities community. I could list out the instances but two that really get me are:
a) In a quiz when it comes to a science question it is often on the line of 'What year was Newton born?. That is not a science question, it is a history question. In all the science I was taught I was never taught when a scientist was born.
b) When a spacecraft docks, or say lands on an asteroid the velocity is given relative to the earth. I appreciate when you are stopped by the police for speeding and asked how fast you are going you don't say '30mph relative to the earth' as that is taken for granted and would be weird, but when a spacecraft lands on an asteroid to give the velocity relative to the earth is plain bonkers as it is a useless measure and to make it worse they never say what it is relative to. And it is never challenged.
While there has been some opposition to the offshore expansion of the Rampion wind farm off the Sussex coast, most of the debate has been about how the onshore bits get connected to the grid. This is the challenge with both offshore and onshore wind - ideally you want to build it as near to the people who will be using the power, and that’s where NIMBYs enter the frame. Personally I enjoy seeing the lights twinkling on the horizon - and marvel that Rampion 2 will be taller than the Eiffel Tower (though further out to sea). Try installing that on land!
One of the things I have always wondered in the case of wind farms is whether bigger is better. Does a 600ft tall turbine generate twice as much energy as 2x 300ft turbines?
I always blow the minds of people when I tell them you get more pizza with one 15 inch pizza than with 2 lots of 10 inch pizzas.
I don't want to be rude about your friends but their minds are obviously blown fairly easily. On a point of unnecessary pedantry, do you get 15" pizzas? You often see 14" ones because they use twice the dough of a 10" one to make the base so it's the natural large size to make. I worked in a pizza restaurant for years so naturally consider myself an expert on all things in this area. Ham and pineapple was available.
You do get 15 inch pizzas or do you ?
A pizza takeaway has always been a popular choice on a Friday night – but one couple who were not happy with its size took it to the next level.
Coral and Luke Heath were branded the ‘takeaway police’ after getting out a tape measure to prove their pizza was smaller than 15 inches.
The pair became frustrated after it turned out their £13 margherita pizza was in fact 13 inches – two inches less than the advertised size.
Westgate Pizza in Canterbury, Kent, have now hit back at the couple’s attack saying their pizzas shrink after being cooked.
While there has been some opposition to the offshore expansion of the Rampion wind farm off the Sussex coast, most of the debate has been about how the onshore bits get connected to the grid. This is the challenge with both offshore and onshore wind - ideally you want to build it as near to the people who will be using the power, and that’s where NIMBYs enter the frame. Personally I enjoy seeing the lights twinkling on the horizon - and marvel that Rampion 2 will be taller than the Eiffel Tower (though further out to sea). Try installing that on land!
One of the things I have always wondered in the case of wind farms is whether bigger is better. Does a 600ft tall turbine generate twice as much energy as 2x 300ft turbines?
I always blow the minds of people when I tell them you get more pizza with one 15 inch pizza than with 2 lots of 10 inch pizzas.
I don't want to be rude about your friends but their minds are obviously blown fairly easily. On a point of unnecessary pedantry, do you get 15" pizzas? You often see 14" ones because they use twice the dough of a 10" one to make the base so it's the natural large size to make. I worked in a pizza restaurant for years so naturally consider myself an expert on all things in this area. Ham and pineapple was available.
As per other posts from me today; I am really not surprised at all.
While there has been some opposition to the offshore expansion of the Rampion wind farm off the Sussex coast, most of the debate has been about how the onshore bits get connected to the grid. This is the challenge with both offshore and onshore wind - ideally you want to build it as near to the people who will be using the power, and that’s where NIMBYs enter the frame. Personally I enjoy seeing the lights twinkling on the horizon - and marvel that Rampion 2 will be taller than the Eiffel Tower (though further out to sea). Try installing that on land!
One of the things I have always wondered in the case of wind farms is whether bigger is better. Does a 600ft tall turbine generate twice as much energy as 2x 300ft turbines?
I always blow the minds of people when I tell them you get more pizza with one 15 inch pizza than with 2 lots of 10 inch pizzas.
I don't want to be rude about your friends but their minds are obviously blown fairly easily. On a point of unnecessary pedantry, do you get 15" pizzas? You often see 14" ones because they use twice the dough of a 10" one to make the base so it's the natural large size to make. I worked in a pizza restaurant for years so naturally consider myself an expert on all things in this area. Ham and pineapple was available.
You do get 15 inch pizzas or do you ?
A pizza takeaway has always been a popular choice on a Friday night – but one couple who were not happy with its size took it to the next level.
Coral and Luke Heath were branded the ‘takeaway police’ after getting out a tape measure to prove their pizza was smaller than 15 inches.
The pair became frustrated after it turned out their £13 margherita pizza was in fact 13 inches – two inches less than the advertised size.
Westgate Pizza in Canterbury, Kent, have now hit back at the couple’s attack saying their pizzas shrink after being cooked.
Having skimmed some more of his recent articles, I can't help feeling sorry for Jasper King. Is this really what he wanted when he decided to become a journalist 'with an interest in politics, crime and general news'?
While there has been some opposition to the offshore expansion of the Rampion wind farm off the Sussex coast, most of the debate has been about how the onshore bits get connected to the grid. This is the challenge with both offshore and onshore wind - ideally you want to build it as near to the people who will be using the power, and that’s where NIMBYs enter the frame. Personally I enjoy seeing the lights twinkling on the horizon - and marvel that Rampion 2 will be taller than the Eiffel Tower (though further out to sea). Try installing that on land!
One of the things I have always wondered in the case of wind farms is whether bigger is better. Does a 600ft tall turbine generate twice as much energy as 2x 300ft turbines?
I always blow the minds of people when I tell them you get more pizza with one 15 inch pizza than with 2 lots of 10 inch pizzas.
I always find it frustrating that people don't get the square and cube rules and are always amazed that some small things can jump relatively high distances, or that sparrows can have very thin legs or elephants can't jump or that cats can fall off windowsills unharmed yet we break bones, etc, etc and don't get that it is just an obvious function of mathematics/physics.
Dropping mammals down lift shafts: a mouse lives, a rat dies, a man breaks, a horse splashes.
JBS Haldane
Had never heard of him. Looked him up. I'm guessing from his impressive Wikipedia page he knew why.
Can we bury the hatchet on yesterday please? I suspect we got carried away and were dancing on a pinhead. I got annoyed by your first response which came over to me as anti science, which I am guessing is far from the truth. I do have a thing re the average person's failure to appreciate science and the complete lack of interest in why stuff happens (I give my example of the cube rule just discussed). I find it particularly prevalent in the humanities community. I could list out the instances but two that really get me are:
a) In a quiz when it comes to a science question it is often on the line of 'What year was Newton born?. That is not a science question, it is a history question. In all the science I was taught I was never taught when a scientist was born.
b) When a spacecraft docks, or say lands on an asteroid the velocity is given relative to the earth. I appreciate when you are stopped by the police for speeding and asked how fast you are going you don't say '30mph relative to the earth' as that is taken for granted and would be weird, but when a spacecraft lands on an asteroid to give the velocity relative to the earth is plain bonkers as it is a useless measure and to make it worse they never say what it is relative to. And it is never challenged.
Absolutely
I know Newton's laws, I know to say "matched velocities," and I enjoyed as much as the next man that appalling Clooney sci fi film last year where someone explains that if you turn off a spaceship's drive it doesn't immediately stop, it carries on coasting for a while.
Something that we don't seem to have in the UK debate is the Danish approach of giving communities a financial incentive to accept wind farms (which is one reason why the country has a huge number of them). If accepting some wind turbines on the horizon meant significantly lower council tax, I wonder whether opposition would persist.
I think the Scottish government say that windfarms should donate £5,000 to the local communities for every MW generated. I don't think it's the law though - just a 'should'.
Energy being a retained area, it's likely that the SG wouldn't be able to put that into legislation.
While there has been some opposition to the offshore expansion of the Rampion wind farm off the Sussex coast, most of the debate has been about how the onshore bits get connected to the grid. This is the challenge with both offshore and onshore wind - ideally you want to build it as near to the people who will be using the power, and that’s where NIMBYs enter the frame. Personally I enjoy seeing the lights twinkling on the horizon - and marvel that Rampion 2 will be taller than the Eiffel Tower (though further out to sea). Try installing that on land!
One of the things I have always wondered in the case of wind farms is whether bigger is better. Does a 600ft tall turbine generate twice as much energy as 2x 300ft turbines?
I always blow the minds of people when I tell them you get more pizza with one 15 inch pizza than with 2 lots of 10 inch pizzas.
I always find it frustrating that people don't get the square and cube rules and are always amazed that some small things can jump relatively high distances, or that sparrows can have very thin legs or elephants can't jump or that cats can fall off windowsills unharmed yet we break bones, etc, etc and don't get that it is just an obvious function of mathematics/physics.
Dropping mammals down lift shafts: a mouse lives, a rat dies, a man breaks, a horse splashes.
JBS Haldane
Applies to money too, and talk of millions, billions and trillions - which get mixed up.
In a potential taxpaying population of 50 million (UK is about this):
We need to build tidal power plants, because they're reliable, unlike wind farms. At some times yesterday wind was producing about 2% of power compared to 60% a couple of days earlier.
That's harsh:
Wind is reliable over long periods, it's just not reliable for today or next Thursday. (And, for that matter, tidal is great for knowing you'll get power today... But it won't necessarily be at the time of maximum demand.)
Every kilowatt hour of electricity generated by wind is an mmbru of gas we don't need to import.
This is the key for me. Wind power reduces imports and increases the potential for exports. We are simply not in a position to be pusillanimous about this: go for it, onshore, offshore, whatever. I also think that the massively increased interconnectivity between European countries is doing a lot to solve the battery problem. When the wind blows in the north sea everyone across Europe can burn less gas.
Agreed. Some dated info FWIW: when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks), onshore wind was massively cheaper to produce allowing for all constructions and maintenance costs than anything else (and tidal was FAR more expensive). Offshore wind wasn't bad but the maintenance costs for installations in deep water made it inferior to onshore. These factors may have changed for reasons mentioned elsewhere on the thread and there are externalities to consider such as the impact of access roads, but I doubt if the basic mathematics are all that different.
There was also an EU project which I think still exists as a long-term concept as links are gradually developed - linking energy supply across the continent and across the Med to North Africa, on the basis that you'd almost never get a situation where there was a shortage of wind in Norway and sun in Algeria at the same time. Loss on energy in transit as an issue, but a surprisingly small one. It's the kind of pan-European project where we should be happy to take part regardless of our views on Brexit.
No it isn't. These projects must be subjected to rigorous cost value analysis, and ditched where necessary. The interconnectors to Germany are a ludicrous waste of money when we don't have good interconnectors to Scottish wind farms.
The biggest mistake that all Uk governments have made for a generation is the Treasury obsession with “value for money”
Of course we should make sure that what we decide to do is built in the most cost effective manner
But something like interconnectors to Germany has strategic value
Unless you like Germany being dependent on Russia for some strange reason?
"The Capitalists will do a rigorous cost value analysis of the rope with which we will hang them."
We need to build tidal power plants, because they're reliable, unlike wind farms. At some times yesterday wind was producing about 2% of power compared to 60% a couple of days earlier.
That's harsh:
Wind is reliable over long periods, it's just not reliable for today or next Thursday. (And, for that matter, tidal is great for knowing you'll get power today... But it won't necessarily be at the time of maximum demand.)
Every kilowatt hour of electricity generated by wind is an mmbru of gas we don't need to import.
This is the key for me. Wind power reduces imports and increases the potential for exports. We are simply not in a position to be pusillanimous about this: go for it, onshore, offshore, whatever. I also think that the massively increased interconnectivity between European countries is doing a lot to solve the battery problem. When the wind blows in the north sea everyone across Europe can burn less gas.
Agreed. Some dated info FWIW: when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks), onshore wind was massively cheaper to produce allowing for all constructions and maintenance costs than anything else (and tidal was FAR more expensive). Offshore wind wasn't bad but the maintenance costs for installations in deep water made it inferior to onshore. These factors may have changed for reasons mentioned elsewhere on the thread and there are externalities to consider such as the impact of access roads, but I doubt if the basic mathematics are all that different.
There was also an EU project which I think still exists as a long-term concept as links are gradually developed - linking energy supply across the continent and across the Med to North Africa, on the basis that you'd almost never get a situation where there was a shortage of wind in Norway and sun in Algeria at the same time. Loss on energy in transit as an issue, but a surprisingly small one. It's the kind of pan-European project where we should be happy to take part regardless of our views on Brexit.
No it isn't. These projects must be subjected to rigorous cost value analysis, and ditched where necessary. The interconnectors to Germany are a ludicrous waste of money when we don't have good interconnectors to Scottish wind farms.
The biggest mistake that all Uk governments have made for a generation is the Treasury obsession with “value for money”
Of course we should make sure that what we decide to do is built in the most cost effective manner
But something like interconnectors to Germany has strategic value
Unless you like Germany being dependent on Russia for some strange reason?
"The Capitalists will do a rigorous cost value analysis of the rope with which we will hang them."
A major reason the Merkel and Co went with Russia gas was that it was the cheapest option.
It also made Germany the gas hub for Europe, of course - with NordStream 2
Green [Former Mermaids CEO who took her son to Thailand for castration sex change op on his/her 16th birthday] kept telling the story of Jackie because, for a long time, it gave her moral authority. No doubt, parents have long been great advocates for the rights of their marginalised children. But an alternative way of looking at Green is she was at least as good an advocate for her own rights: the right to put her child on untested hormone pills, the right to take her child to Thailand for a sex change. There is a fine line between using your parenting experience to help others, and validating your parenting choices by encouraging others to do the same.
I’m not waiting for celebrities such as Emma Watson to own up to their foolishness, mainly because I don’t care what Emma Watson thinks about anything. But all the journalists, teachers, editors and activists who endorsed Green’s obviously ludicrous ideas and shouted down anyone who didn’t, they really need to take a long look at their judgement, their motives and themselves. Because Green never once hid who she was.
China is using government social media apps to enforce ultimate tyranny. This will become clearer over the next year as it faces down its own population.
The US / Europe have a different economic tradition to China, namely one of private sector monopolies or oligopolies. But it should be very clear to anyone paying the slightest attention that social media in the West is at the top of the same slope that China has already descended down.
People like to argue that it doesn’t impact free speech if Twitter or Facebook or Apple choose to block perfectly legal statements from their platforms. But that rather overlooks the monopolies they enjoy, especially when looked at as a Silicon Valley blob.
If true that Apple has threatened to remove Twitter from the App Store that would be a pretty scary revelation indeed. And almost certainly a counterproductive one, given you really don’t want to give Musk the bit between his teeth to go after you. Hopefully Tim Cook realises this and calms his people down a bit.
If Apple does ban Twitter from the App Store while carrying the apps for completely unmoderated chat systems, then I predict that will trigger the politics to break control of the App Store Waller Garden away from Apple.
The most entertaining thing in that battle will be all the people who wanted the walled garden broken down, who will suddenly support it to the death.
AIUI Apple has very stringent controls on what goes onto the app store, technically. If they think your app will break the OS, it won't go on or will be removed. They also have strict privacy don'ts. Given that Twitter have just got rid of a load of people who made the app, I would not be surprised if the app suddenly broke in weird and wonderful ways that would cause Apple to remove it.
Maybe I am just a cynic but this strikes me as just posturing over fees. Musk has said several times he is not happy with the fees charged and even posted memes about it. He is looking to turn twitter into a cash generator. All of what he is doing is geared towards that.
Parler and Gettr and Truthsocial are on Apple stores. Why wouldn't twitter be.
Yes, the actual reason that Apple would ban Twitter is nothing to do with free speech, and everything to do with Apple ensuring they get their cut of all the $8 subscription fees.
We need to build tidal power plants, because they're reliable, unlike wind farms. At some times yesterday wind was producing about 2% of power compared to 60% a couple of days earlier.
That's harsh:
Wind is reliable over long periods, it's just not reliable for today or next Thursday. (And, for that matter, tidal is great for knowing you'll get power today... But it won't necessarily be at the time of maximum demand.)
Every kilowatt hour of electricity generated by wind is an mmbru of gas we don't need to import.
This is the key for me. Wind power reduces imports and increases the potential for exports. We are simply not in a position to be pusillanimous about this: go for it, onshore, offshore, whatever. I also think that the massively increased interconnectivity between European countries is doing a lot to solve the battery problem. When the wind blows in the north sea everyone across Europe can burn less gas.
Agreed. Some dated info FWIW: when I was PPS to the Energy Minister (Malcolm Wicks), onshore wind was massively cheaper to produce allowing for all constructions and maintenance costs than anything else (and tidal was FAR more expensive). Offshore wind wasn't bad but the maintenance costs for installations in deep water made it inferior to onshore. These factors may have changed for reasons mentioned elsewhere on the thread and there are externalities to consider such as the impact of access roads, but I doubt if the basic mathematics are all that different.
There was also an EU project which I think still exists as a long-term concept as links are gradually developed - linking energy supply across the continent and across the Med to North Africa, on the basis that you'd almost never get a situation where there was a shortage of wind in Norway and sun in Algeria at the same time. Loss on energy in transit as an issue, but a surprisingly small one. It's the kind of pan-European project where we should be happy to take part regardless of our views on Brexit.
No it isn't. These projects must be subjected to rigorous cost value analysis, and ditched where necessary. The interconnectors to Germany are a ludicrous waste of money when we don't have good interconnectors to Scottish wind farms.
The biggest mistake that all Uk governments have made for a generation is the Treasury obsession with “value for money”
Of course we should make sure that what we decide to do is built in the most cost effective manner
But something like interconnectors to Germany has strategic value
Unless you like Germany being dependent on Russia for some strange reason?
"The Capitalists will do a rigorous cost value analysis of the rope with which we will hang them."
China is using government social media apps to enforce ultimate tyranny. This will become clearer over the next year as it faces down its own population.
The US / Europe have a different economic tradition to China, namely one of private sector monopolies or oligopolies. But it should be very clear to anyone paying the slightest attention that social media in the West is at the top of the same slope that China has already descended down.
People like to argue that it doesn’t impact free speech if Twitter or Facebook or Apple choose to block perfectly legal statements from their platforms. But that rather overlooks the monopolies they enjoy, especially when looked at as a Silicon Valley blob.
If true that Apple has threatened to remove Twitter from the App Store that would be a pretty scary revelation indeed. And almost certainly a counterproductive one, given you really don’t want to give Musk the bit between his teeth to go after you. Hopefully Tim Cook realises this and calms his people down a bit.
If Apple does ban Twitter from the App Store while carrying the apps for completely unmoderated chat systems, then I predict that will trigger the politics to break control of the App Store Waller Garden away from Apple.
The most entertaining thing in that battle will be all the people who wanted the walled garden broken down, who will suddenly support it to the death.
AIUI Apple has very stringent controls on what goes onto the app store, technically. If they think your app will break the OS, it won't go on or will be removed. They also have strict privacy don'ts. Given that Twitter have just got rid of a load of people who made the app, I would not be surprised if the app suddenly broke in weird and wonderful ways that would cause Apple to remove it.
Maybe I am just a cynic but this strikes me as just posturing over fees. Musk has said several times he is not happy with the fees charged and even posted memes about it. He is looking to turn twitter into a cash generator. All of what he is doing is geared towards that.
Parler and Gettr and Truthsocial are on Apple stores. Why wouldn't twitter be.
Yes, the actual reason that Apple would ban Twitter is nothing to do with free speech, and everything to do with Apple ensuring they get their cut of all the $8 subscription fees.
Twitter has charged for various services before, without Apple getting a cut.
While there has been some opposition to the offshore expansion of the Rampion wind farm off the Sussex coast, most of the debate has been about how the onshore bits get connected to the grid. This is the challenge with both offshore and onshore wind - ideally you want to build it as near to the people who will be using the power, and that’s where NIMBYs enter the frame. Personally I enjoy seeing the lights twinkling on the horizon - and marvel that Rampion 2 will be taller than the Eiffel Tower (though further out to sea). Try installing that on land!
One of the things I have always wondered in the case of wind farms is whether bigger is better. Does a 600ft tall turbine generate twice as much energy as 2x 300ft turbines?
I always blow the minds of people when I tell them you get more pizza with one 15 inch pizza than with 2 lots of 10 inch pizzas.
I always find it frustrating that people don't get the square and cube rules and are always amazed that some small things can jump relatively high distances, or that sparrows can have very thin legs or elephants can't jump or that cats can fall off windowsills unharmed yet we break bones, etc, etc and don't get that it is just an obvious function of mathematics/physics.
Dropping mammals down lift shafts: a mouse lives, a rat dies, a man breaks, a horse splashes.
JBS Haldane
Had never heard of him. Looked him up. I'm guessing from his impressive Wikipedia page he knew why.
Can we bury the hatchet on yesterday please? I suspect we got carried away and were dancing on a pinhead. I got annoyed by your first response which came over to me as anti science, which I am guessing is far from the truth. I do have a thing re the average person's failure to appreciate science and the complete lack of interest in why stuff happens (I give my example of the cube rule just discussed). I find it particularly prevalent in the humanities community. I could list out the instances but two that really get me are:
a) In a quiz when it comes to a science question it is often on the line of 'What year was Newton born?. That is not a science question, it is a history question. In all the science I was taught I was never taught when a scientist was born.
b) When a spacecraft docks, or say lands on an asteroid the velocity is given relative to the earth. I appreciate when you are stopped by the police for speeding and asked how fast you are going you don't say '30mph relative to the earth' as that is taken for granted and would be weird, but when a spacecraft lands on an asteroid to give the velocity relative to the earth is plain bonkers as it is a useless measure and to make it worse they never say what it is relative to. And it is never challenged.
Absolutely
I know Newton's laws, I know to say "matched velocities," and I enjoyed as much as the next man that appalling Clooney sci fi film last year where someone explains that if you turn off a spaceship's drive it doesn't immediately stop, it carries on coasting for a while.
China is using government social media apps to enforce ultimate tyranny. This will become clearer over the next year as it faces down its own population.
The US / Europe have a different economic tradition to China, namely one of private sector monopolies or oligopolies. But it should be very clear to anyone paying the slightest attention that social media in the West is at the top of the same slope that China has already descended down.
People like to argue that it doesn’t impact free speech if Twitter or Facebook or Apple choose to block perfectly legal statements from their platforms. But that rather overlooks the monopolies they enjoy, especially when looked at as a Silicon Valley blob.
If true that Apple has threatened to remove Twitter from the App Store that would be a pretty scary revelation indeed. And almost certainly a counterproductive one, given you really don’t want to give Musk the bit between his teeth to go after you. Hopefully Tim Cook realises this and calms his people down a bit.
If Apple does ban Twitter from the App Store while carrying the apps for completely unmoderated chat systems, then I predict that will trigger the politics to break control of the App Store Waller Garden away from Apple.
The most entertaining thing in that battle will be all the people who wanted the walled garden broken down, who will suddenly support it to the death.
AIUI Apple has very stringent controls on what goes onto the app store, technically. If they think your app will break the OS, it won't go on or will be removed. They also have strict privacy don'ts. Given that Twitter have just got rid of a load of people who made the app, I would not be surprised if the app suddenly broke in weird and wonderful ways that would cause Apple to remove it.
Maybe I am just a cynic but this strikes me as just posturing over fees. Musk has said several times he is not happy with the fees charged and even posted memes about it. He is looking to turn twitter into a cash generator. All of what he is doing is geared towards that.
Parler and Gettr and Truthsocial are on Apple stores. Why wouldn't twitter be.
Yes, the actual reason that Apple would ban Twitter is nothing to do with free speech, and everything to do with Apple ensuring they get their cut of all the $8 subscription fees.
Yes - it's as if somebody wants to set up a stall in your garden that they'll make squillions of quid out of.
There's no free speech on the internet, not even in the sense that almost all of us are free to walk along public paths, or to declaim on whatever subject we like in public parks so long as we don't break any public laws. It's more akin to being allowed to attend events on someone's estate.
Nobody should take Musk seriously when he says stuff about free speech.
As far as I can tell, being an assiduous constituency MP has nothing to do with what kind of person you are, or how important you are. Some quite horrible MPs get praised by their constituents, and some extremely blue, effective and intelligent MPs are lambasted as no-shows.
China is using government social media apps to enforce ultimate tyranny. This will become clearer over the next year as it faces down its own population.
The US / Europe have a different economic tradition to China, namely one of private sector monopolies or oligopolies. But it should be very clear to anyone paying the slightest attention that social media in the West is at the top of the same slope that China has already descended down.
People like to argue that it doesn’t impact free speech if Twitter or Facebook or Apple choose to block perfectly legal statements from their platforms. But that rather overlooks the monopolies they enjoy, especially when looked at as a Silicon Valley blob.
If true that Apple has threatened to remove Twitter from the App Store that would be a pretty scary revelation indeed. And almost certainly a counterproductive one, given you really don’t want to give Musk the bit between his teeth to go after you. Hopefully Tim Cook realises this and calms his people down a bit.
If Apple does ban Twitter from the App Store while carrying the apps for completely unmoderated chat systems, then I predict that will trigger the politics to break control of the App Store Waller Garden away from Apple.
The most entertaining thing in that battle will be all the people who wanted the walled garden broken down, who will suddenly support it to the death.
AIUI Apple has very stringent controls on what goes onto the app store, technically. If they think your app will break the OS, it won't go on or will be removed. They also have strict privacy don'ts. Given that Twitter have just got rid of a load of people who made the app, I would not be surprised if the app suddenly broke in weird and wonderful ways that would cause Apple to remove it.
Maybe I am just a cynic but this strikes me as just posturing over fees. Musk has said several times he is not happy with the fees charged and even posted memes about it. He is looking to turn twitter into a cash generator. All of what he is doing is geared towards that.
Parler and Gettr and Truthsocial are on Apple stores. Why wouldn't twitter be.
Yes, the actual reason that Apple would ban Twitter is nothing to do with free speech, and everything to do with Apple ensuring they get their cut of all the $8 subscription fees.
Twitter has charged for various services before, without Apple getting a cut.
IIRC, the previous iteration of ‘premium’ features on Twitter were only available on web/desktop versions, not mobile, and only to a few thousand invited and verified power users.
As opposed to trying to get a recurring $8/month from tens of millions of casual users, which is what they’re trying to do now.
China is using government social media apps to enforce ultimate tyranny. This will become clearer over the next year as it faces down its own population.
The US / Europe have a different economic tradition to China, namely one of private sector monopolies or oligopolies. But it should be very clear to anyone paying the slightest attention that social media in the West is at the top of the same slope that China has already descended down.
People like to argue that it doesn’t impact free speech if Twitter or Facebook or Apple choose to block perfectly legal statements from their platforms. But that rather overlooks the monopolies they enjoy, especially when looked at as a Silicon Valley blob.
If true that Apple has threatened to remove Twitter from the App Store that would be a pretty scary revelation indeed. And almost certainly a counterproductive one, given you really don’t want to give Musk the bit between his teeth to go after you. Hopefully Tim Cook realises this and calms his people down a bit.
If Apple does ban Twitter from the App Store while carrying the apps for completely unmoderated chat systems, then I predict that will trigger the politics to break control of the App Store Waller Garden away from Apple.
The most entertaining thing in that battle will be all the people who wanted the walled garden broken down, who will suddenly support it to the death.
AIUI Apple has very stringent controls on what goes onto the app store, technically. If they think your app will break the OS, it won't go on or will be removed. They also have strict privacy don'ts. Given that Twitter have just got rid of a load of people who made the app, I would not be surprised if the app suddenly broke in weird and wonderful ways that would cause Apple to remove it.
Maybe I am just a cynic but this strikes me as just posturing over fees. Musk has said several times he is not happy with the fees charged and even posted memes about it. He is looking to turn twitter into a cash generator. All of what he is doing is geared towards that.
Parler and Gettr and Truthsocial are on Apple stores. Why wouldn't twitter be.
Yes, the actual reason that Apple would ban Twitter is nothing to do with free speech, and everything to do with Apple ensuring they get their cut of all the $8 subscription fees.
Twitter has charged for various services before, without Apple getting a cut.
not really - previously the things that twitter charged for weren't part of the iOS app.
The biggest thing this shows is how little Musk thought things through. Anyone who pays any attention to the online world would know of the rather large and bitter court battle over fees that Epic is waging (and mainly losing) against Apple.
Comments
Everybody needs to buy at least six Apple devices today or fascism and anarchy will prevail.
Much of Lincolnshire, for example, would look much more interesting if it were covered in turbines.
Is Samsung an acceptable alternative ?
Apple only.
Building the massive roads and getting the turbines and blades into position onshore - and the equipment to do that - may well be a serious bottleneck.
Actual information on this is the key - if onshore wind can't be built up faster than offshore, what's the point?
More is better and more flexible. What we need is more diversity of supply.
It should be noted that the interconnectors to France are saving their bacon at the moment. What happens to my neighbour will happen to me, eventually....
And a Danish company (Ørsted, formerly DONG) own most of the UK offshore windfarms
That's not to say we shouldn't chip away at the edges too, where in the spirit of 'every little helps'. I'm sure there are hundreds of small easy wins. But there isn't a big bang to be had there.
On which note, November has been a bit disappointing for wind on gridwatch. I'm sure we've had more wind than that, though it's very still today.
Some of the time is good enough for me.
Regarding the November's poor wind performance, does anyone know how reliably the tides have been running? Just asking.
It's almost like Denmark saw carbon-zero as an opportunity, rather than a burden.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-28/vw-warns-soaring-eu-energy-costs-render-battery-plants-unviable
Much of that is to do with basic propellor theory, I believe - the prefect propellor has infinite area, is infinitely large and turns infinitely slowly.
ETA: The Spinnaker Tower has always looked to me like it should be some kind of vertical axis wind turbine.
https://twitter.com/ONS/status/1597525836521168897
Also gas storage is important in the medium term for us. (Nuclear and significant tidal are longer term solutions as they take a while to build)
At least, so I'm told. Obviously I've only got a 16 foot horn so I've never found out.
The problem is that areas which are shallow enough, have good wind patterns, and are not conservation zones, are quite limited in total area.
(Of course, the development of cost-efficient floating platforms would open up a massive additional resource.)
https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1755489/eu-offshore-wind-trade-off-density-efficiency
...After a long consultation with shipping, fishing, military and ecological organisations, the Netherlands concluded there is so little space in the crowded North Sea that they need to cram more wind turbines into the available space. They can increase the energy yield of a wind farm by 50% if they put double the amount of turbines into its allotted space. Doing this, however, means individual turbines would not run to maximum efficiency because they would sit too squarely within the wakes of other turbines. Wake losses are expected to rise by about 30%.
"We are not really in favour of that," Hans Timmers, chief executive of the Netherlands’ Wind Energy Association, told Windpower Monthly when the plans were published. But it was necessary, he said, to protect nature.
"At the moment they're looking to the easiest parts of the North Sea to accelerate building," he said. "But when you get to the big roll-out later in the century, we have to look to the nature areas and the Natura 2000 areas [protected under EU law] as well. Natura 2000 is the big issue."
The Netherlands' new target, to double offshore wind to 21.5GW by 2030, will see a six-fold increase in the country's offshore wind capacity. By 2050, it wants to grow to 70GW.
"My feeling is that this doubling of our targets for 2030 is already on the limits of what is achievable," said Emile van Druten, who advises the Dutch government on nature-inclusive designs for offshore wind farms, on behalf of engineering consultancy WitteveenBos.
The Dutch plan will see turbines installed in its extra offshore wind areas at a density of about 10MW/km² – the limit of what was feasible.
"If you go higher, then the wake losses really start increasing," said Druten.
Dutch North Sea wind farms already run, on average, at 6MW/km², the limit of what is considered required for optimum efficiency. EU and US offshore forecasters have typically assumed an optimum density of about 3.4MW/km².
At that latter rate though, Europe could not meet its wind targets without building in protected Natura 2000 areas, because only about 3% of the North Sea available for constructing wind farms was actually suitable, WitteveenBos concluded in a 2019 study for a Dutch-Danish offshore initiative. The report assumed that waters deeper than 55 metres would require floating turbines, which it expected would still be significantly more expensive than turbines on fixed-bottom foundations by around the year 2030...
JBS Haldane
I was told that one reason that a number of early electric cars were crushed by the manufacturers rather than left on the open market was that idiots started modding them, killed or horribly injured themselves with massive electric shocks and sued for vast sums.
If the whole line is recalled and destroyed the car company no longer has to pay for the insurance against this.
All because people don't understand the difference between an AA battery and a toy motor and a literal quarter ton storage battery....
Significant capacity continental scale interconnects make renewables much more efficient (though Europe still remains one of the worst major economic regions from the point of view of renewables intermittency). Interconnects with North Africa could significantly alleviate the intermittency problem.
Storage is also part of the solution, and 24 hour storage is already economic to some extent - but the cost of providing electricity storage for the infrequent but inevitable periods of around two weeks with very low wind across the entire European continent will be prohibitive for the foreseeable future.
These days, they are offering dynamic positioning cranes for maritime work. The boat may rock and roll a bit, but the load is moved steadily and smoothly (mostly).
On a point of unnecessary pedantry, do you get 15" pizzas? You often see 14" ones because they use twice the dough of a 10" one to make the base so it's the natural large size to make.
I worked in a pizza restaurant for years so naturally consider myself an expert on all things in this area. Ham and pineapple was available.
Time for a walk, methinks.
No doubt we'll be back to Brexit and Scottish Indy later on.
Of course we should make sure that what we decide to do is built in the most cost effective manner
But something like interconnectors to Germany has strategic value
Unless you like Germany being dependent on Russia for some strange reason?
Can we bury the hatchet on yesterday please? I suspect we got carried away and were dancing on a pinhead. I got annoyed by your first response which came over to me as anti science, which I am guessing is far from the truth. I do have a thing re the average person's failure to appreciate science and the complete lack of interest in why stuff happens (I give my example of the cube rule just discussed). I find it particularly prevalent in the humanities community. I could list out the instances but two that really get me are:
a) In a quiz when it comes to a science question it is often on the line of 'What year was Newton born?. That is not a science question, it is a history question. In all the science I was taught I was never taught when a scientist was born.
b) When a spacecraft docks, or say lands on an asteroid the velocity is given relative to the earth. I appreciate when you are stopped by the police for speeding and asked how fast you are going you don't say '30mph relative to the earth' as that is taken for granted and would be weird, but when a spacecraft lands on an asteroid to give the velocity relative to the earth is plain bonkers as it is a useless measure and to make it worse they never say what it is relative to. And it is never challenged.
A pizza takeaway has always been a popular choice on a Friday night – but one couple who were not happy with its size took it to the next level.
Coral and Luke Heath were branded the ‘takeaway police’ after getting out a tape measure to prove their pizza was smaller than 15 inches.
The pair became frustrated after it turned out their £13 margherita pizza was in fact 13 inches – two inches less than the advertised size.
Westgate Pizza in Canterbury, Kent, have now hit back at the couple’s attack saying their pizzas shrink after being cooked.
https://metro.co.uk/2022/06/10/kent-couple-measure-pizza-to-prove-it-wasnt-15-inches-16777635/
https://metro.co.uk/author/jasper-king/
I know Newton's laws, I know to say "matched velocities," and I enjoyed as much as the next man that appalling Clooney sci fi film last year where someone explains that if you turn off a spaceship's drive it doesn't immediately stop, it carries on coasting for a while.
Excess capacity can always be exported. On days of less wind we can use gas saved up in storage
In a potential taxpaying population of 50 million (UK is about this):
£1m is 2p each
£1bn is £20 each
£1 tn is £20,000 each.
Ukrainian forces shot down a Russian Su-25 and a Su-24 aircraft.
https://twitter.com/WarMonitor3/status/1597536223391670273
I've never once seen Ed turn up to anything. Caroline Flint, yes, new Tory Boy, yes, Rosie Winterton, yes.
It also made Germany the gas hub for Europe, of course - with NordStream 2
I’m not waiting for celebrities such as Emma Watson to own up to their foolishness, mainly because I don’t care what Emma Watson thinks about anything. But all the journalists, teachers, editors and activists who endorsed Green’s obviously ludicrous ideas and shouted down anyone who didn’t, they really need to take a long look at their judgement, their motives and themselves. Because Green never once hid who she was.
https://unherd.com/2022/11/mermaids-useful-idiots/
There's no free speech on the internet, not even in the sense that almost all of us are free to walk along public paths, or to declaim on whatever subject we like in public parks so long as we don't break any public laws. It's more akin to being allowed to attend events on someone's estate.
Nobody should take Musk seriously when he says stuff about free speech.
The First Feminist is knocking it out of the park.
https://twitter.com/BrianSpanner1/status/1597536447460171776
I don't actually live in his constituency although I have heard the same from other locals who do.
It is a lot easier to garner complaints than praise so for all I know he may actually run a competent office.
I'm not a big fan of parachuting, mind. He still lives in North London.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/sep/26/ed-miliband-doncaster-north-reaction
https://www.ons.gov.uk/census/maps/choropleth/identity/religion/religion-tb/no-religion??=&lad=E09000033
As opposed to trying to get a recurring $8/month from tens of millions of casual users, which is what they’re trying to do now.
The biggest thing this shows is how little Musk thought things through. Anyone who pays any attention to the online world would know of the rather large and bitter court battle over fees that Epic is waging (and mainly losing) against Apple.