Wind Turbine

@Jack McHammocklashing Let me see whether I'm understanding you. You're not keen on some prehistoric remnant of a primitive fish called a Sturgeon! Is that it?

 

What! don't like Caviar

 

Re turbine owners being paid not to produce or being paid when it's too windy to produce:- It's a stupid system and shouldn't work that way but I can't blame companies for taking advantage of it.

If the government encouraged you to put something in your garden, that you could afford, and guaranteed to pay you good money for having done so, It's likely that most people would do it.

It's the system that's wrong.

It reminds me of a local farmer (a customer of mine) who took advantage of two pieces of farming legislation. They were from two different government departments. It was in the days when the Ministry of Agriculture were encouraging farmers to become more efficient by making their fields bigger. They were paid for removing hedgerows to make bigger fields. At the same time another ministry (I think it was M for the Environment) was paying farmers to grow hedgerows.

This farmer was removing his hedgerow, very carefully, and planting it at the end of the field. He got the two grants and they were sufficient for him not to need to grow anything in the field!!!! He continued to do this for a few years and gradually just moved his hedgerows around his farm.

Also, weren't farmers being paid to leave their fields fallow and not plant certain crops? (EU legislation - I think.)

The stopping of the turbines when there are high winds needn't happen. A friend of mine, a retired engineer and inventor, has a small wind turbine and has redesigned it with some gearing in it to slow it down if the wind gets too strong (he lives in a windy part of the country). I'm sure this could be scaled up.

Also, solar power should be able to be stored, in the same way as described in my earlier post, when it's a time of low demand.

I have solar panels that have to, by law, automatically switch off if there's a power cut . If there was a cost effective way of storing the electricity produced during those times we would be able to draw on the electricity from storage to continue to power our house. We've had seven power cuts so far this year!

There is a way of storing excess production but it's too expensive at the moment. Also, there's a legal way of diverting the production during a power cut to power an immersion heater but, once again, not cost effective at the moment.