wind turbines

I was reading that Denmark aims at producing 50% of
its electricity consumption via wind turbines by 2020.
How is the UK doing in that regard?

(http://www.windpower.org/en/mindblowing_denmark/mindblowing_denmark.html)

 

http://www.renewableuk.com/en/renewable-energy/wind-energy/uk-wind-energy-database/

this seems to give all the data

 

Denmark will only produce 50% of its electricity by wind turbines when the wind is blowing.

When it aint, they wont.

 

I love wind turbines ... I also love solar panels ...

 

Prefer solar panels to the wind turbines.......

 

Both have their benefits, Carl ... especially here ...

 

Yes I know you do get a lot of wind there but also sunshine I have been there quite a few times
now love it and look forward to going every year..........
I just think the wind turbines have there place maybe ...... I tend to lean towards the solar panels.

 

I don't get how come in some villages you're not even allowed to put a TV aerial up or replace the old wooden framed windows with uPVC double glazing, but you can cover the whole roof with a monstrosity that looks like something out of an 80s sci fi B-Movie.

 

Now, now ... don't get personal ... people will start talking ...

 

Grade 11 listed I imagine C1 as all of my houses in the UK have been ... but I am sure I would not have been allowed to put solar panels on the roof ...

 

We don't like wind turbines and this is one of the reasons...


Also don't like solar panels as they are an eyesore stuck on peoples roofs especially when they completley fill up one side of the house.One of my friends in our village can't sit in their garden when it is a bright sunny day as the neighbours panels reflect the light and it dazzles them as they try to sit in their garden and there was a talk about the same thing on the JVS show last year i think it was...

Parts of our newly created village has planning restrictions on it,so we have to have a conservatory in wood and painted white,yet the family at the bottom of our garden can have a plastic one.If we want plastic windows we have to get planning permission like we had to with putting up the conservatory but others in the village can put up what they want with no permission.

Areials are supposidly not allowed {in roof space only}but new villagers have slapped them on the roof,oh and we are supposed to get planning permission even to put up a Sky dish.

Yet it makes me laugh that now villagers are slapping all these great big panels to the South side of their roofs which does make the village an eye sore.

There are wind turbines in one of the villages that we can see whan we walk round our village and half the time they are turned off because if the wind is too strong they don't work properly and when the local farmer wanted to put some up in fields next to our village there was an uproar and in the end the plans were chucked out.

From what we heard it costs more to build these turbines and install them than what energy they produce and they reckon they only have a life span of twenty five years anyway.

Also,I dislike going to Scotland for my holidays and seeing them stuck all over the mountain tops,which takes away the beauty of the area.

It is a pity that Portugal can't have the whole lot in their country and then feed the power back to our national grid if they like them that much

 

Personally, I think much of the world's energy problems could be solved with one simple move. Put a hefty tax on plastic products.

Plastic is cheap, and that's why the world is so full of it. I don't know why its cheap. It uses a colossal amount of energy to produce it, and the process consumes vast amounts of oil. It is also a smelly, dirty, extremely unhealthy process to manufacture it. I've learnt a thing or two about plastic manufacturing in my time working on one of Europe's biggest petrochemicals sites.

Just up the road from me is a big plastic manufacturing plant that uses so much electricity, they have their own on site power station, just for them, and they still need to buy vast amounts from the grid. They also waste vast amounts of energy, because it is more profitable to waste it than it would be to capture and reuse it. For example, any fault at all, no matter how minor, trips a safety mechanism which immediately opens a valve and send all the explosive by-product straight to the flare stack to burnt off safely. It seems the flare stack spends more time on than off these days. A great fireball reaches for the sky. I even suggested to the site manager one time that it would be a good idea to stick a boiler and a steam turbine on it to generate power when they flare. "Too expensive" was the answer.

Unless everything is running exactly within parameters, the output from the process is a useless sludge. No good for anything apparently and it has to be discarded (how, I don't know).

Once the plastics come out the other end of the process, a manufacturing process that its self uses insane amounts of energy, the plastic pellets are bagged up, put onto an endless convoy of lorries and most of it goes to the nearest sea port, where it will be loaded onto a ship to set sail all the way to the other side of the world, to China. The Chinese will then use colossal amounts of energy, mostly from dirty, out dated coal fired power stations, to power their manufacturing process, where they will make loads of cheap disposable tat. Kids toys that will be broken by the end of day one, or carrier bags that will be used once then put into a cupboard which is already full of carrier bags. Plastic drinks bottles that will end up in the sea. Having made all these things and many, many more, they will be loaded onto ships and sent all the way to the other side of the world, back to us.

On receiving our plastic tat, we will make some use of it until it is bust, then if we're conscientious and have the facilities locally, we will recycle it. That means it goes off in a lorry, where huge amounts of energy will go into sorting it, washing it, shredding it, bailing it up and then off it goes on a lorry again to be turned into something else. Quite possible the clothes you are wearing.

All this colossal amount of energy is consumed, because plastic is cheap. If plastic wasn't cheap, it would not be economically viable to use it in such quantities, and therefore far less power would be consumed, not to mention resources like coal and oil, and we'd all be better off. Except of course the petrochemicals companies, oil companies, and governments that live in their pockets.

Don't forget to unplug your phone charger when you're not using it.