Renewable energy sources - the good, the bad and the ugly

This reminds me of a comic style joke picture I once saw (I guess the youth would call it a meme these days).

It featured a hand dryer as found in pub toilets. A sign pointed to the start button, saying 'press here for a 20 second speech by the prime minister'.

 

I think what is madness about this, is how many of us actually don't know this has been going of for sometime.

I read an article quite sometime ago, it was saying that the UK government were subsidising or should I say "us" windfarm developments with generators as a backup when needed.
I will try and find the article, but the sums were like £500 million plus to subsidise diesel generators, back then it was in excess of 1000 generators, probably even more now.

They were also predicting that renewable energy would increase in price from the 2020's, which would reflect on our energy bills. It also reported, that when the government stops subsidising renewable energy, our bills would increase even more.

 

UK Must Use Diesel Generators to Back-Up Wind Turbines - IER (instituteforenergyresearch.org)

Trident Energy releases White Paper on auxiliary power for offshore wind farms - Trident Energy

 

Everyone with half a brain knows that wind turbines don't generate electricity when the wind ain't blowing.

 

To quote from the article:

South Scotland Labour MSP Colin Smyth told the Mail that “whatever the reasons, having to use diesel generators to de-ice faulty turbines is environmental madness”.

I would love to have a conversation with this MSP Colin Smyth. I'd love to know what better ideas he has. Perhaps he'd like to build a bonfire under each turbine, or simply let them suffer damage. I would ask how he manages to juggle his duties as an MSP with all the demands of being an engineer, seeing as he clearly knows more than the team of engineers that took the decision to they took to protect the turbines temporarily while a bigger fault was being addressed.

EDIT: oh I've just noticed which party he is from. Labour, who's strategy for the last few years has been to criticise everything that everyone else does while at the same time consistently failing to offer any credible alternatives.

 

Which is why half the time the dont work, and now it seems they dont like cold weather.
Not particularly reliable to say the least.

 

Wind turbines produced 27% of the UK's electricity last year. I'd say that's pretty good. Of course they don't work if the weather conditions aren't right. That's why there's a strong focus on storing energy now.

https://new.abb.com/news/detail/911...age-partnership-powers-uk-journey-to-net-zero

Additionally, there's a pilot project launching soon on Teesside that will use excess power from the wind farms just off the coast to power the process of electrolysis to produce hydrogen.

Everyone knows that wind turbines don't work when there's no wind, but out at sea, that is rarely the case. And what fewer people know is that wind turbines sometimes have to be 'turned off' (they adjust the angle of the blades to effectively stop them) if supply outstrips demand, such as if it's too windy and it's the middle of the night when demand drops. Engineers know this, and are looking at ways to store the excess energy to feed into the grid when demand outstrips supply, effectively ironing it out.

There's still a long way to go, but wind turbines are certainly not unreliable, contributing 27% of last year's electricity in the UK, and with several new off shore wind farms already approved and a number of projects to store excess energy, they play a very significant part in our energy mix.

 

Off shore wind will always be more effective than on shore, they probably wont freeze as much either, and I'm not discounting wind power, I just dont see it as reliable, bit like solar, great when conditions are right but not so good when it aint.
So. apart from storage which seems years away to me, what do we do, just keep backing it all up with fossil fuels.
Put it this way, if you put a few solar panels on your roof and a windmill in your garden would you be prepared to cut yourself off from the grid.
I know I wouldn't.

 

Yeah, but you dont run another engine to keep your car engine warm, if that is what you mean.

 

Being realistic, with approximately 1500 wind turbines here in Scotland I don't think 70 being heated is going to make a lot of difference to the environment. The planet we live on is never going to be totally 'green' whatever we do to try and change things.

 

It's all too late anyway. All our children and grandchildren can hope for is that technology comes up with a solution to save Earth.