Mr.g.b. Wants To....

Apparently a small wind-turbine (they cost about £1k each IIRC) per house could supply much of the power most households need, if stored up.

 

where from tenson..? - I recall that you could buy them from b&q (?) - but they were supposed to be crap...

 

And how would you store it? How much energy is required to make the batteries? (note: This applies to hybrid cars too)

I do agree though. If you think about how supercomputing tasks can now be distributed among many average computers (eg folding@home, SETI, etc) then why not apply the same model to power generation? Small wind turbines. Not necessarily on every house, but a lot of town centre buildings and higher-rise buildings could have two or three several kW wind turbines on top. Kirklees council have taken that approach, with Huddersfield civic centre III building having two 6kW turbines, solar PV and solar water heating panels on the roof.

 

Wind turbines - have to be big, mounted above obstructions for a huge radius and have a steady breeze to work in, to do much good. If in doubt, take steady breeze over sheer size - the power you can extract varies as V^3! The difficulty is the storage. Must better to net-meter and export any surplus to the grid, and then draw down when you need it - not really storage, but more efficient and better than nothing.



(yes I have been reading-up - we're trying to convince a client they really want one

 

What we need is something like the San Gorgonio Pass wind farm (I nominate Windy Hill, where the M62 climbs the western side of the pennines)... However, tall buildings in city centres will usually have a stiff breeze at the top, and aren't exactly beautiful to begin with, and could easily support 20-30kW of turbines each.

 

Dunno really, again it was part of some leaflet I read a while back. I was thinking of the B&Q ones, but the leaflet was the one quoting around £1k a turbine. On top of a chimney there must be a bit of a breeze.

I can see it now though - we have to use less electricity because there has been a wind shortage this year!

They have a medium sized one at Shorn country park near us and even with hardly any breeze it seems to always spin. It connects to the grid, but apparently provides most of the power the visitor centre and the cafe need.

 

The B&Q turbine costs £1500 - I've got a leaflet at home. When I can afford one, I'll get one. We've already got solar tubes on the roof that preheat the water. During the summer, when the Rayburn's out, they mean that we only use a little electricity to heat the water. Every little counts, and it's about time we stopped being so wasteful. Just about everything modern society does is wasteful of resources.
As for wind turbines, the Danish approach where small scale local generation (eg a turbine for the village / district) not only has less visual impact, but is also more democratic (usually owned by a local co-operative) and responsive to local needs. In Britain, we all get fleeced by big business. They get the grants, but are out to maximise profit, so will only put a generator where they can get maximum return, so a park of 30 or so huge turbines bang in the middle of a site of natural beauty will do just nicely, then. What Britain needs is what we preach to the rest of the world: a dose of accountable local democracy.
I'm just getting going nicely, so I'll stop here, but things'll never get much better until Whitehall returns powers to local communities. In France, once the epitomy of the centralised state, decentralisation started in the early 80s, and the regions and municipalities have real decision-making powers, and the money to back it up. I was in Montpellier last week. A vibrant, energetic modern city which nevertheless respects its cultural inheritance. It puts modern British cities to shame.

 

how about hydro electrics ? nando.

 

How about them? Where would you put them in this country?

 

Manchester - anywhere.

 

On a more serious note Bob, it is debatable whether hydro electric dams are environmentally friendly. For example look at the dam in china where about 2 million people were re-housed by force (unlikely to happen in other countries I grant you) and the massive effect on local wild life.

 

Severn barrage? - it's surely an idea that will return for debate since it offers something like 8-10GW output potential (whereas current UK wind generation installed capacity is just short of 2GW total, and that's enough to put us in the top ten nations on renewables IIRC)

 

It doesn't have to be big scale. There's a plan to re-instate the water mills along the river Lugg in Herefordshire to generate electricity. Every little helps, and if it's locally based, so much the better. (Whether it ever sees the light of day, though, is a different matter.)

 

The trouble with estuary barrages is the terrible toll on local flora.

 

Exactly the reason the Mersey barrage never went ahead. Now though they have deciced on a system that uses terbines sat in the estuary that generate as the tide ebbs and flows.

I would like to be more environmentally freindly, though I already recycle all I can including silver foil and the like, but here on the Wirral the council have a pretty poor record of supporting environmental issues.

 

By hydro I was thinking more along the lines of dams and pipes and variations. Certainly tidal and wave power have huge possibilities for a maritime country like this.