FIT subsidies for solar panels

[Nose Ma]

I am relying on Wikipedia for that, so it may be wrong. It also mentions 45 deaths due to lack of food (as a result of evacuating the area) and two from the evacuation procedures itself. So, worst case would be 45+2+2 = 49.

As for the future - who can tell?

I'm not advocating for a full move to nuclear fuel for a minute, I think we need to consider the impact of every last Watt we use, environmental and human, at all links in the chain. A mixed approach, with a view to removing gas and oil before they run out or get so scarce nobody can afford them has to be right.

 

[The Cumbrian]

Sadly it's not that simple. Here's the "deaths per TWh" of each type of power production, worldwide:


Nuclear 0.04 (5.9% of world energy)

Does that include any casualties from Chernobyl, any cancers there may have been from Three Mile Island and on the minor side of possible numbers but important to we West Cumbrians the cancers following the 1952 leak?

Or is it merely the deaths within the construction and production of the plant and energy?

 

[Hivemaker.]

I am relying on Wikipedia for that,

And what about the death rate from the radio active fallout,and the
damage/death it will cause for years to come.


If this happens at Hinkley point, it would would effect a huge populated area,including London,and further, driven by the prevailing westerly winds.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

If we look about to our European neighbours (with much greener credentials than ours) we can see a clear shift away from wind generated power.
In 1998,Norway commissioned a study of wind power in Denmark and concluded that it has "serious environmental effects, insufficient production, and high production costs." , Denmark the biggest windfarm user is having second thoughts, has already cancelled plans for three offshore windfarms and has scheduled withdrawal of subsidies for all existing windfarms - development of onshore windfarms has effectively stopped, The Netherlands are decommissioning many of its wind farms.
Since early this century Germany and Spain have been cutting back tax breaks to wind energy projects and in 2006, the Spanish Government ended - by emergency decree - its subsidies and price supports of wind energy.
On average these wind farms only generate about 30% of their potential capacity but use electricity 100% of the time it could be that many turbines use (for free)twice as much energy as it produces and sells (the energy companies don't like to broadcast that fact)
I can do research too - and have done a lot over the last few years

 

[Nose Ma]

Does that include any casualties from Chernobyl, any cancers there may have been from Three Mile Island and on the minor side of possible numbers but important to we West Cumbrians the cancers following the 1952 leak?

Or is it merely the deaths within the construction and production of the plant and energy?

Yes it does, the whole gamut. Estimates are made for "hidden" deaths. That would be low for windmills, as you'd be looking at them falling on people.

Chernobyl is probably lower than you imagine too. The World Health Organization study in 2005 indicated that 50 people died to that point as a direct result of Chernobyl. 4000 people may eventually die earlier as a result of Chernobyl, but those deaths would be more than 20 years after the fact and the cause and effect becomes more tenuous.

It's the same with TMI - incidence is too low to accurately measure. The problem is that over 20-40 years people would naturally develop diseases and die.

We live with radiation all the time. Your smoke alarm has a lot of Americium in it, busy radiating away.
Cornwall is very radioactive in places (radon in basements for example) and having an X-Ray is a HUGE dose. Plants absorb Carbon 14, which is radioactive, and you eat it every day. It's now embedded in your very cells. But it doesn't matter. It's more radioactive next to a coal plant than a nuclear plant, which is bizarre. Just by sleeping next to someone for a night they dump roughly six months worth of living next to Sellafield into you. Or, one month of living by a coal plant. (that's right, coal plants emit far more radioactivity than nuclear ones).

Should something bad happen, like a tsunami hitting the UK, we'd still have more of an issue with the fact a tsunami had hit us than some nuclear stuff in the air. It's still the same in Japan - Fukushima was not the main disaster, the main disaster was the earthquake and tsunami. Think of all the destroyed housing, ruined crops, destroyed industry, instant death, death later due to starvation and exposure.

As mentioned above - life is full of risk. yes, if Hinkley point spontaneously combusted it would be Very Bad Indeed. It's just unlikely to. Every day we take risks. Thousands of us die every year on the road, but we don't want to ban cars. Every day thousands of aircraft fly over the South East - think of the devastation that would be caused if they all fell out of the sky at once. It's just very, very unlikely to to happen.

What if the refineries at Aberdeen all caught fire at once - the "fallout" from that would be incredible. It's unlikely to happen.

Ladybower reservoir could burst. That would kill thousands at a stroke. It's just very unlikely to. (actually four people died in Japan as a direct result of dams bursting during the earthquake. I don't know what knock-on effects they had, but the authorities had to do a survey of every dam and evacuate people in their shadows. That seemed to be missed by our news reports, because radiation is more terrifying).

It's a bit about psychology as much as anything. Over millenia you have developed good strategies for dealing with risk. Tiny risks that are local we deal with well. That's essentially the same thinking system as learning "Ugg the caveman just died eating that plant. I will not eat that plant". It gets harder to conceptualise bigger risks. Take cruise ships. Should we ban cruises now one has crashed? How confident are you as you walk the gangplank to your ship? As a rule - not very. After 9/11 in the US there was a general fear of flying. More people took to the roads, and were killed in traffic accidents. So in dealing with the fear they did not understand, they actually increased their risk, and killed themselves.

Nuclear Power is one of those things that sounds scary. It's had films made of it (The China Syndrome springs to mind) and films are hugely influential in people's beliefs. Bombs were dropped using the same technology, killing untold thousands. It all adds up in the mind.

Again, just for the avoidance of doubt, I don't advocate a switch to just nuclear. I think it has its place alongside other forms of energy. We need a mixed approach. As I said - how many deaths per KWh is acceptable? I do not know the answer to that.

 

[porterswoods]

That's difficult too - surely the correct figure would be "total CO2 released per MWH generated over lifetime of product". I have no data on that.

Yes I have been thinking, whilst sorting eggs, of the way best to express it. I thought of exactly the same way.

Until the is a reliable and comparable way to use the co2 data then it is pretty useless. I did a bit of googling and found this. It is from the world nuclear association so could be biased.

It shows the greenhouse gas emmissions from the various power sources. It shows that wind power produces 10-48 grammes of Co2 per Kwh and nueclear produces 9-21 grammes of co2 per Kwh.

Bearing in mind that the figures were taken from a government report in 2006, and that wind technology has advanced significantly over those years, the two technologies are very similar in co2 output per Kwh and these two are the cleanest out of the ones listed.

I don't think that one source of energy is the way to go, a mix of technologies would be best.

 

[Nose Ma]

It's quite a wide margin for them all isn't it? I am surprised Hydro is so big as well. As you mention, the source will have an agenda.

Which in some ways reflects the wole debate here (and, I daresay the Socttish Independence thingy) accurate and impartial data from any side is very hard to obtain, and we tend to interpret according to our prejuduces.

An interesting page.

 

[The Cumbrian]

We live with radiation all the time. Your smoke alarm has a lot of Americium in it, busy radiating away.
Cornwall is very radioactive in places (radon in basements for example) and having an X-Ray is a HUGE dose. Plants absorb Carbon 14, which is radioactive, and you eat it every day. It's now embedded in your very cells. But it doesn't matter. It's more radioactive next to a coal plant than a nuclear plant, which is bizarre. Just by sleeping next to someone for a night they dump roughly six months worth of living next to Sellafield into you. Or, one month of living by a coal plant. (that's right, coal plants emit far more radioactivity than nuclear ones).

I am well aware of that but having a brother who used to work in the atomic industry I well aware of the effects of differing exposures. They do not worry about such small things as smoke detectors and an xray every 10 to 20 years. They do start running wildly in circles and tipping thousands of gallons of milk away etc. when there are leaks.

I also suppose that the cluster of childhood leukemias at a village near an atomic energy plant is purely coincidental

And then there is the problem of the tower which has had to be sealed for 50,000 years.

Funny stuff radiation did you notice that the radiation that leaked from Chernobyl headed directly to three areas of the UK all of which happened to have power stations?

Strange that if it doesn't matter sheep from at least one of these areas were being kept out of the food chain until very recently. That is over 25 years. The population (apart from those extremely close to the farms) had totally forgotten about Chernobyl so it wasn't a public relations exercise.

 

[porterswoods]

It's quite a wide margin for them all isn't it? I am surprised Hydro is so big as well. As you mention, the source will have an agenda.

Which in some ways reflects the wole debate here (and, I daresay the Socttish Independence thingy) accurate and impartial data from any side is very hard to obtain, and we tend to interpret according to our prejuduces.

An interesting page.

It is hard to get unbiased statistics anywhere, but at least there is compareble information in it. I would have thought solar and hyro would have been before nuclear and wind, but as i said it could be biased.

I suspect that they have quite a wide margin because of the the age of the plant and technology that is available to them.

The main reasons for me to put in a wind turbine are a) it is windy here b) i can use all of the electricity myself when it is generating and c) it is low maintainance, which is a big plus for me.

 

[Nose Ma]

I am well aware of that but having a brother who used to work in the atomic industry I well aware of the effects of differing exposures. They do not worry about such small things as smoke detectors and an xray every 10 to 20 years. They do start running wildly in circles and tipping thousands of gallons of milk away etc. when there are leaks.

I also suppose that the cluster of childhood leukemias at a village near an atomic energy plant is purely coincidental

And then there is the problem of the tower which has had to be sealed for 50,000 years.

Funny stuff radiation did you notice that the radiation that leaked from Chernobyl headed directly to three areas of the UK all of which happened to have power stations?

Strange that if it doesn't matter sheep from at least one of these areas were being kept out of the food chain until very recently. That is over 25 years. The population (apart from those extremely close to the farms) had totally forgotten about Chernobyl so it wasn't a public relations exercise.

I think the point is NOTHING, I repeat NOTHING as far as power generation goes is 100% safe. Even living by power transmission lines is potentially dangerous:

"Because the use of electric power is so widespread, humans are constantly exposed to electric and magnetic fields. Studies conducted in the 1980s showed a link between magnetic field strength and the risk of childhood leukemia. After reviewing more than two decades of research in this area, NIEHS scientists have concluded that the overall pattern of results suggests a weak association between increasing exposure to EMFs and an increased risk of childhood leukemia. The few studies that have been conducted on adult exposures show no evidence of a link between residential EMF exposure and adult cancers, including leukemia, brain cancer, and breast cancer. Based on these reviews, the NIEHS recommends continued education on practical ways of reducing exposures to EMFs. The problems of coal fired pollution on asthma, childbirth, heart disease etc. are huge, far, far in excess of nuclear related illness."

For any type of power you can drag up instances of death/illness that may (or may not) be attributable to the power source. (correlation does not necessarily equal causation) The problem is we are addicted to electricity. We are told we should all have electric cars - so we need more power stations. Each one of them will kill people, is that acceptable?

I don't know how to solve that problem - but my reasoning tends towards a mixture of sources, and nuclear is part of that mixture.

 

[Brosville]

I think the fact that Porterswoods is having a turbine speaks volumes - he's no fool, he's "done the sums", and knows it'll pay back - that size of turbine is efficient - larger ones, even more so...

I note the same tired old "anti wind, pro nuke" nonsense is being trotted out yet again - if you take the Chernobyl disaster as an example, if you believe one side there were half a dozen deaths as a result, if you believe other reports, hundreds of thousands over the years- there is a great deal of money to be made, and gazillions are being spent on "spin" - I tend to set aside the (very valid) safety concerns when arguing against nuclear use -it can't be online fast enough to help us out of the yawning energy gap towards which we are hurtling, it can only ever give us a few percent of our needs, and to do it anywhere near safely and clear up afterwards is ludicrously expensive (if ALL the costs are disclosed), so it'll starve genuine renewables of essential funding (and is only back on the agenda thanks to a lot of very effective lobbying)

If there is the slightest doubt about "wind working" look at arch-capitalist Warren Buffet investing his own money in wind power (and no, US subsidies aren't very big, and are dwarfed by those to the fossil fuel industries) He's in it for one thing - profit!

 

[For want of a better word]

Unlike Bros vile I make no mistake that the production of concrete and steel for the manufacture of wind mills /turbines/ access roads/ dams/ 4 meter thick walls for power stations and all other sundry infrastructure for energy production /transmission etc etc... produces mega tons of CO2

Batteries containing cadmium poison our soils..................................

Best to go back to the "Dark ages" before steam power or electricity then?

My final word on all the Windy Miller Syndrome fans is that I studied energy production at length as part of a degree in Environmental Science and that MY conclusion was that mans way forward was in a safe and renewable source of power that had low emissions
Nuclear fusion fits that bill,,, but possibly Thorium as a fission source would be worth investigating before all the valuable resource of mineral oil and coal is exhausted.

Most of the "alternative technologies" available at present, are backed by those merely interested in creative accountancy and wealth creation for the few.

Back to my wax candles then...........

Did anyone note the Archimedes screw "in reverse" on the Dart? shown on Three hungry boys.... water powered "Killerwhats"... but used tons of steel and concrete to make!

 

[For want of a better word]

He's in it for one thing - profit!



QED

 

[Brosville]

Because it pays back - even after all the concrete etc!

 

[Nose Ma]

I still think it has to be mixed with other things.

The wind does not always blow.

The "nameplate" generative capacity of a windmill is seldom, if ever met.

If we need more power it's easy to chcuk more coal in the coal-fired station, or lower a fuel rod in the nuclear one. We can't just hope the weather changes. We can't predict the wind, so the more windmills we rely upon, the more backup we need in case it goes quiet.

Also, returning to the subsidy question - who pays? It's the poor man who cannot afford (or has no space for) his own windmill. So we are taxing the poor to help out the better off. That strikes me as being unfair.

Subsidising coal, nuclear, whatever is bad - BUT we all use it, so we all contribute. As a gross generalisation wealthier people in bigger houses use more, so contribute more to the poor man with his card. As an absolute rich people pay more tax than poor, so subsidise them that way (go google that before you doubt it, the top 10% of earners pay 50% of the tax take).

Wind and sun alone cannot provide the energy we need consistently as at today. That need will grow. We need other sources.

 

[porterswoods]

He's in it for one thing - profit!



QED

I am not hiding from the fact that it will make money, but by the time i've paid for the machine it is not as much as people think.

For the first 5 years I will have to pay for the machine to be there, before it returns an income. It is by no means a small amount of money. A reduction in the FiT rate will determine how much i will have to invest upfront.

On the other side I want to control the cost of my electricity bill and reduce my emmissions, which is what the government want to encourage. I am with British Gas and generation make up is around 50% Gas, so a reduction in emmissions would be made.

I have also had my renew for my electricity this last month, up 2p a unit. This amounts to a lot of money on my bill, something I have to act on to keep my busines protected from in the future. Generation of my own electricity is a way of protecting my income from the shocks that energy prices bring, and hopefully secure the prosperity of my busines for future years.

So yes it makes me money, but there are other factors to consider. Remember I will use every unit of electricity that a 50kw turbine will produce.

As the system is set up to subsidise wind energy production, I want to reduce emmissions and generate my own electricty then now is the time to do it. As a wind turbine is a feasable option for me, I would be stupid not to do it now.

 

[porterswoods]

Wind and sun alone cannot provide the energy we need consistently as at today. That need will grow. We need other sources.

I agree, wind and solar are not magic. I will need a source of electricity when the wind doesn't blow. I would like that to be as clean as possible, but any new power plant will come with government help.

As for subsidies, I don't think they should exist at all in the mordern world. That would be from farming to energy, free markets should dictate the prices people should pay. The only problem is things would become more expensive.

To aswer the next question, whould I do it if the Fit's didn't exist? Yes, but whilst they do i'd be a fool not to claim it.

 

[Nose Ma]

PortersWoods - I agree. If someone offers you something that looks good, and on a bit of sum doing is good - take it. With both hands. If we had space and the spare cash I too would be in the queue.

The Hinkley Point thing made me think a bit. Hinkley Point currently is rated at 1250MW. The biggest wind turbine I can find is rated at 7.5MW. So, assuming the wind is perfect the whole time, and the windmills operate at exactly 7.5MW (and can be tuned as electricity is needed) you would need 1250/7.5 = 167 windmills to make one Hinkley Point.

167 windmills need a lot of space. According to Wiki large turbines should be 15 times the blade diameter apart for “best economic effect”. Each blade is 126m in diameter, or 0.126km. Each one would need an area of (15*0.126/2)squared times pi = 6km2. If you wanted 167 of them that’s 167 times 6 = 1000km2 (I rounded down). Somerset is a big county, well the 7th largest, so luckily there is a lot of space there. It’s just over 4,000km2. So to fit all of the windmills in, you’d need to use up nearly a quarter of Somerset.

This will get worse if you factor in that (by the windpower lobby’s own figures) windmills run on average at about 30% of their rating. So, to make it work, you’d need almost ALL of Somerset covered with massive windmills just to replace Hinkley Point.
To replace Drax, you’d need at least half a Yorkshire on the Perfect model, or 1.5 Yorkshires on the “closer to what we could do in reality” model. Drax is about 7% of all our power needs at present.

 

[MuswellMetro]

As i worked at Dungeness B as a student holiday job in the late 60's I would prefer to be cold and sit in the dark rather than let them build new Nuclear Power Stations, their manament was control chaos...and they employed ME!!!!

 

[Brosville]

" windmills run on average at about 30% of their rating" - is straight out of the "anti-wind" handbook, and is deeply misleading - when the sums are done for a wind install, that is taken into consideration - it's a a bit like saying "My Ferrari is capable of 220 mph, but because I won't be driving it all the time, and when I do it will be at 70mph or under for most of the time, therefore it's rubbish!...."

What people forget is that the UK has one of the best wind resources in Europe (Germany would love to have it!) - we need "supergrids" to shunt power around as and when it is generated and needed.(Wind is always blowing somewhere!)


You don't "lose" countryside to turbines - yet another fallacy, you can still farm "around them",......

I don't think wind and solar are "magic" either, but I do know they will play a very useful part in a sensible energy mix for the future, and would suggest that there is no foundation in the nonsense trotted out that either or both "don't work", or in some way will give us all warts and cause the milk to curdle.........

Sadly we do need subsidies - if we left it to "the market" we'd have coal powered everything, and our time on earth as a species would become even shorter........