Thanks PONDHEAD - Renewal energy &Wind farms
Posted: Thursday, 22 July 2004 |
Comments
Greetings Island Wanderer. As you talk about there being benefits from windfarming, perhaps you could list them so we all will know what you believe they will be. I note you expect jobs & cheap electricity.
Its the Highland Games today in Tobermory. Lots of socialising and events (all held together by volunteers). Yet another sunny, fun filled day.
pondhead from mull
So, in the year 2004 you want more jobs and cheaper electricity? Dream on. I'm sorry, but it's precisely this attitude that, over the last 50 years, has led to a polluted plant.
I want, I want.... more of it.... and cheaper....
The reality on jobs is:-
1) Windfarms do not attract tourists
2) Windfarms do not employ local people
The number of local jobs and the local economy can, therefore, only decline when windfarms along are considered.
The belief windmills will lead to cheaper electricity is false:-
The present main stream power stations (all pollutants) will be run less often but, of course, cannot be closed as they will be needed to be there for those (many) days it’s not windy. They will, therefore, run less efficiently (which itself creates more pollution) and their costs when running will sour offsetting any benefits brought by wind generation.
Then there are the real questions:
Do we want to reduce CO2 & SO2 emissions?
If we do then let’s scrub our fossil fuel chimneys and stop pretending windmills will solve this problem. Wind generating is excellent and has an important future but if you believe it will save us from our mis-doings over the last century you are very wrong.
Unfortunately, the only way to tackle the real issue of emission reduction costs money, real money, hence its’ not being done, considered or often discussed.
Tony from Uig
Tony,
Thanks for the comment; this makes blogging more interisting.
yes,I want cheaper electricity and also jobs. The highlands can take it as they are much depleted in the requirements that lean to a worthwhile population.
The day the bens and glens become polluted;I hope will never happen!
Why should the tourists go at the advent of wind farms - plenty room, I'm sure.And as far as local employment is concerned; if it is not going to be evident; my whole support of wind energy is from the outset futile. I have still to be convinced about this.
Power stations are enviornmentally unfriendly.Nuclear power is not safe now or in the future. Nuclear residue, no matter what you do with it remains volatile for centuries. It is not acceptable.
Wind farms appear to be a good option at present; and who knows what might turn up in the future. Wave power fully developed, maybe!
I'm not saying that we have found the answer as regards co2 and so2 emissions yet; but we are trying. How can we possibly do it with money when it is obviously not available; here anyway.
Tony, please don't judge me too severely. I'm just trying for an answer.
Tony from Uig
Pondhead,
Thanks for the comment. This is what makes blogging worthwhile. Well, I have imagined that wind farms are benificial:-
(1)clean
(2)efficient
(3)Power cheaply produced
(4)prjects a benefit to communities
(5)safe
(6)jobs
I would like to believe that is the way ahead in the 21st ccntury.
Tobermory Games yesterday! You made me think back and a bit sad.
In the past there would be a mini exedus from Tiree on this day per Macbrayne's special run - but sadly not now.
What a day it was - never to be forgotten - still talked about in the ceilidh house.
Pondhead from mull
Hi Island Wanderer. I think Tony from Uig says it well. Any chance of a fuller explanations of the benefits from 2 3 4 and 6. Some may argue about 1depending on location but I will let you have 5.
I like to be positive so even I can think of some more benifits of windfarms.
7.Nimby renewable energy to meet English renewable energy shortfall.
8.Jobs for EEC wind turbine manufacturers.
9.Expected returns for lending banks. Risk means borrowing will cost more for smaller community projects - good for banks.
10.Landowners earn money from pylon and windfarm site rents and new access roads built for free.
11.Increased commercial rates contribution to council.
12.Possible community trust job.
13.Short term jobs with construction companies: "gates openers".Main specialist workforce imported
14.Annual consultancy and management fees for windfarm consultants for expected 25 year life of project.
15.Better roads - the result of bringing in the turbines and possible reduced traffic during the summer months.( stage record for Mull Rally ?)
16.Expectation that Windfarms may generate funds to allow communities to stop having to run fund raising events like dances or car boot sales etc.
17.Possible influx of new community members,( possibly retired people, who wish to make use of any short term community funds/facilities and who don't need jobs.)
18.Depending on proximity to windfarm, a possible reduction in house prices for locals wishing to buy homes.
19.Creates optimism that windfarms will replace forestry, farming, fish farming jobs.(false, but optimism is always worth having)
20.Occasional job cleaning the midges off the turbine blades until someone comes up with a chemical solution.
21.A fabulous way of expressing envy at the success of tourism based on Scottish landscape.
22. Increased in electricity price makes economising more rewarding.
23. A flashing light on every turbine - bringing iconography of the city to the countryside for those that like that sort of thing.
24. As the percentage of windfarm energy rises about 10% a sense of community may spring up as the lights start going out.( the national grid becomes unstable)
I could go on.
Re : the mini exodus from Tiree to the Tobermory Highland Games - It was a flood of people to be sure - they pored off and were pored back on again.Totally agree that sea transport was way better then, Tiree to Tobermory via Oban lacks one thing :practicality. My memories of Games Day then were mostly of cutting up sandwiches and helping in the tea tent as a kid or was that the Salen Show...or both.
pondhead from Mull
Island Wanderer.
I moved to the islands from Anglesey, a pretend island in N Wales. Within 10 miles of my house were 3 windfarms (80 odd generators), the nearest generator being 620m from my house.
1) The noise was awful under certain conditions
2) Tourists changed their long term habits of visiting this scenic part of N Anglesey and they moved to other parts of Anglesey, N Wales and elsewhere.
3) The windmills are serviced by engineers from Cheshire, not only 100miles plus away but in another country.
The ONLY input the windmills had to the local economy was ground rent.
OK, so Scotland has lots of room and space until, lets’ say, Tiree is to be covered in windmills. Do you seriously believe you will continue to enjoy the same number of summer visitors?
It’s seems to be OK for windfarms as long as they are not in my back yard.
IF windfarms actually led to a significant reduction our CO2 & SO2 emissions I would consider changing my view and possibly accept it as quite right and proper for Tiree to be the first island to be completely covered in them.
Tony from Uig
Island Wanderer
I too am anti-nuclear but based only on the ethics of leaving waste for so many generations to come. I believe that to be completely unaceptable.
However, unlike you, I believe it is possible to build safe reactors. So far there has only been one power station accident – Three Mile Island – where the incident was contained safely without contamination leaks. It was a financial disaster only.
The two ‘other’ accidents, Windscale (1957) and Chernobyl were both military reactors. Chernobyl, like our present military plutonium factories, Chapel Cross and Calder Hall, make electricity as a side line, probably a political gesture. Chernobyl has a unique reactor core design, one that maximises the production of weapons grade materials. The compromise of such an efficient design is core instability under fault conditions, a compromise no power station reactor would ever consider, or be allowed to consider by the nuclear inspectorate.
If the UK public had been told a military reactor in Russia had exploded questions would have been raised about the safety of our military reactors in Scotland and England – built in the mid 1950’s, still operating and older and more riddle with rot (an opinion only) than any other reactors, worldwide.
Unfortunately, Chenobyl has only influenced ones perception of nuclear power generation, not nuclear bomb production and ownership. I believe it would have been a better tribute to all those who died in and around Chernobyl if the accident had been attributed to the stupidity of the arms race which was rampant when those reactors were designed and built.
It is a very sad thing to say but if you believe CO2 & SO2 emissions must end then nuclear is the only current answer.
The weighing up, in my mind, is then between the ethics of leaving waste vs the consequences of continued emissions. If the golf stream should suddenly turn itself off, as many oceanographers are telling us will happen SOON, and we get another ice age and I suspect Chernobyl and my argument of ethics will be completely forgotten as we race to become nuclear dependant.
Do you remember Ozone? The environmentalists and scientists warned for years about the effects aerosols etc. was having on the ozone layers. Human nature is that we only take heed once it’s too late. It could be the same with CO2 but if the Gulf Stream should turn off it will take longer for it to switch itself back on than it will take for all our nuclear waste to decay ! Now, that so frightening a thought it almost sees me becoming pro nuclear !
PS. My specialism for 20 odd years was reactor core physics, particularly graphite and its safety.
Tony from Uig
Island Wanderer:-
Your reply to Pondhead is interesting, that is your list of reason why windfarms are good.
My comment queries your claim that wind generators are efficient. To say they are efficient or inefficient is very subjective but I have a copy (somewhere still I hope) from a Countryside Council for Wales report into the visual, economic and environmental impact on a windfarm next to where I lived on Anglesey.
On efficiency the report claimed that windmills are wonderful at fooling the public into believing they are efficient - after all they always rotate at the same speed be the wind 1mph or gale force. This is because they must be synchronised with the grid supply (phases and all that). Consequently the public think they are always giving out lots and lots of power even on reasonably still days. In truth they may only be generating a single watt and on many occasions they just feather to maintain grid synchronisation without generating anything, waiting for the next gust of wind.
If windmills were so efficient why do windfarm projects need huge grants to build them? Perhaps the cost per unit generated is not that high after all and the tax payer must guarantee a return for the investment since the sales of electricity cannot. In the early 90’s the government guaranteed the windfarms an additional payment for each kw generated, called the non-fossil-fuel-levy. I don’t know but I suspect it’s still given now. If efficient means making money for the operators/shareholders with grant aid then windfarms are truly efficient.
Tony from Uig
Jobs:-
I forgot to make it clear that on Anglesey the windfarms employed NO ONE at all. I only mentioned the service engineers coming from England. There is no office, no night watchman, no sails put-on & take-off person, no one at all. The construction is done in a day although local people were used to lay the foundation. The windmills come on a lorry in kit form - no jobs there either. They are controlled remotely by radio/satellite.
Hence they contribute NOTHING to their locality.
tony (again) from Uig
I very much regret that windfarms will not bring long term jobs to the highlands and islands that will play host to them, unless, as on Lewis, there is an element of manufacturing related to the wind turbines themselves. Neither will their advent benefit the population as a whole because the National Grid infrastructure additions/strengthening will need to be paid for with rising prices.
As for tourists, it's a well known reality in the industry that if people come for a particular purpose - in this example, beautiful scenery and wildlife - and don't find it, they don't come back but find somewhere that supplies their needs.
Yes, we do need to do something about not only emissions but our energy use - all of us! That's why I've been dashing around this Sunday morning to get as much washing down asap to take advantage of the sunshine and not flog the tumble dryer!
Sunset from Mull
Hi Island Wanderer. I have mislead you and I feel I must come clean on the facts. After extensive research and after having the facts verified, I find I never did make any sandwiches for the Tobermory Highland Games when I was a kid - only for the Salen Show. Sorry about that.
pondhead from mull
Sorry, Island Wanderer, I too have misled you. The military reactors at Chapel Cross and Calder Hall shut down at the end of 2003. At least we can give a sigh of relief over that. But it does beg another question – the UK government has always claimed that weapons grade materials would never come from Civil reactors (power stations) – so where does the MOD get it’s weapons grade stuff from now? It can only be from the civil programme or we import it from elsewhere. Either way it’s an amazing turn of events.
PS I wish I's thought of Ponhead's reasons for windmills !
tony from Uig
I was traveling through the Bakersfield, California region where there are acres of windfarms. When talking to some area residents, I was told that contrary to what the officials in Sacramento (capital of Californis) had said, the windfarms ended up NOT providing as much of a dependency on other forms of energy. The person I talked to considers the windfarms to be a blight on the scenery and a very unproductive venture (by the way, you can see these things for miles and nary a soul to be eyed including tourists).
Barb from United States
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