“Surreptitious subsidies like the ROC - rip-off-charter - sorry Renewables Obligation Certificates are just what I've re-branded them as - a rip off charter - a legal tool which circumvents the ofgen watchdog ruling to prevent over-charging. The people pushing windpower are mainly from the pious old middle class nuLabour voting types trying to claim the upper moral high ground from new middle-class using the ecology stance. They appear to have a dislike for working classes and lower income groups and really hate it when some under-class types make good - something lottery winner advisors point out when winners want to buy a new posh house - a mate a work had a relative who won stacks and went against the advice only to find out the advisor was right. It is this underlying psychology which makes supporters blind to the high costs of electricity (they can afford it) and condemn the less better off to paying very high bills - a form of schadenfreude. Very nuLabour! So the sneak overpricing is major sociological issue and I hope that it gives readers something to mull over. The spin tactics used for renewables (read wind and Anthropogenic [man-made] global warming AGW) is more or less the same templates used in road tranport and anti-civil-liberty policies. I've been on many Govt projects and some ministerial seminars and it never ceases to amaze me how meglo some policitians, industrialists and civil servants are.

However, there is another more important issue which no-one has commented on - what happens when there's no wind, surely there must be some wind around our island - well may be not. Sorry to remind folks of it again, but it does need answering.

Betz and Cube Law aside, the availability of power generation from wind turbines is very low - intermittent. Sure you can have pumped storage hydraulic accumulators like in Wales, but how much land needs to be flooded and how much £££

As mentioned in my earlier comment, last winter, there was no wind, that's why we had lots of snow - there was a UK wide depression, the isobars were well spaced out. So when we need lots of electrical power (lighting the long nights, heating against cold winter temperatures) wind power was not available - no wind! The previous govt as well as the present haven't gone public with this and the likes of BWEA have been pretty much tight lipped along with other pro-wind power fans. Trawling through previous posts here and on other News blogs, no-one has twigged that the emporor has no clothes on.

At any given time the UK generates around 80GW, with an average useage of 60GW. The availability factor is around 10 % for offshore and 3 % for onshore wind farms below 600 m ASL and 10 % for turbines above 600 m ASL An average big off-shore wind turbine has a 2MW output. Wind turbine at Conisholme 800 kW, I'll be generous, round it up to 1MW. The Dinorwig Power Station ~2GW pumped-storage hydroelectric. Large coal fired station o/p is ~4GW, current nuclear ~1 GW, proposed new nuclear stations, ~3GW. Sizewell B is the most available, 2 years between refuelling. Something different from Sudoku n Crossword puzzle.”

“Good informative comments Blokey Bloke, thanks.

Your point about 'subsidies' is one which is usually glossed over .. and as a regular poster mentioned recently on another thread - If Wind farms are as economically viable as the Greens would have us believe, why isn't the private sector building them?”

“Just to add to TH GY. turbine accident list.

Mar 2010 East Renfrewshire 150ft blade snapped off a turbine.

Dec 2009 Norfolk School wind turbine collapses and crushes van

Feb 2009 Conisholme, Lincolnshire 65 ft blade that flew off

Jan 2008 Cumbria wind turbine total collapse”

“The problem with off shore windfarms is that it take a long time to recover the embedded carbon energy that goes into producing them. They need to be running for twenty plus years which is the average service life for such machines and that is assuming very high availability. The availability of power generation from wind turbines is low and therefore further development of these should be phased out in favour in biomass combine heat and generator stations as well as nuclear. As mentioned in my earlier comment, last winter, there was no wind, that's why we had lots of snow. So when we need lots of electrical power (lighting the long nights, heating against cold winter temperatures) wind power was not available. The previous govt as well as the present haven't gone public with this and the likes of BWEA have been pretty much tight lipped along with other pro-wind power fans (pun not intended).

Most nuclear waste in UK is stored in a disused mine at Drigg, Cumbria, and this is mostly comprised of low level radioactive material from clothing, tools, machinery as well as hospital material. On AGR stations, spent fuel is stored in vaults at the station. The fuel is not in metal form but in oxide form - an insoluble ceramic, very stable and easy to store. Uranium and even plutonium are found in the ground and there are such things as naturally occuring reactors in Africa, but you get more hazards from disused asbestos open cast mines left by US owned firms - and they moan at BP.

House prices around Dungeness are disproportionately higher than surrounding settlements. There are lot of folks from the arts/media world and this pushes the prices up.

Uranium has other uses apart from fuel. Its been used as a glass colourant for centuries.

The attitude around south Kent is much different than Lincs, they like the stations since it brings lots of highly-skilled and well paid work with long term security. Even when decommissioned, it still employs people with regular long term work. And even with this cost, which is not subsidised, its still cheaper than wind. Eon have acknowledged that wind power can only be commercially viable with subsidies and wouldn't build them if the subsidies did not exist. E.on in fact are looking into new coal fired stations, I just wonder how much of it will be built in UK.”

“I suppose you could add to the list,a very surprised cow,sheep or fish.....It will still not be a huge problem (unless you were the surprised cow,sheep or fish) to repair the windmills. Nuclear power plants tend to be a leetle more difficult.....”

“I did notice one "broke" in the UK. I cannot recall any falling down,Jo. The point being....Yes,windmills do break,but they do not "fall down". Even if one did,what happens? You get a few squashed gnats,some flat grass,or a very wet piece of machinery. That is hardly a 10,000 year legacy.....”

“Jim wrote: "Anything in salt water is going to need much maintenance",.

Very true Jim..

And I see Huhne announced the other day that he's proposing to erect more of the darn things off-shore - The North Sea to be precise (Dogger Bank). Now, I'm not sure, but isn't the North sea one of the roughest and most hostile patches of water on the planet when a storm gets up? Will the turbines withstand such a constant battering? (They're already started to fall down all over the place - even on land).

And what about the cost of maintenance .. in fact who'll *want* to go out and fix the damn things in the middle of a freezing February night during a vicious North Sea storm? It all sounds massively expensive and hugely impractical to me ..”

“Look at this video and more like it, then decide if you would like one in your back yard?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBYJul2ykZs

Also the story is cosalt has done a deal for £200,000 to provide technicians, 20 jobs so far equates to £10,000 a head, some specialist engineers highly skilled pay is that.”

“There has been some note made here of tidal power. Why is it not used more you say. The fact is it has limited use. It follows the tide starting at zero it rises to a peak then sinks back to zero =. then it rises to a peak in reverse & then declines to zero. The actual power available follows the cube rule(as does the wind). So the energy available is limited.. The tides follow a pattern which does not the daily pattern so the peaks comes at varying hours. Sure we could get a more sustained output if we built tidal barriers. These would be terribly expensive for what little gain. There is a lot more go & read it for yourselves.
Wave action generating needs a wind to create waves. The same restrictions follow this as do the wind restrictions.
Anything in salt water is going to need much maintenance,.
Hence no wave or tide power.”

“Lucy wrote: "Sorry, i obviously haven't done my homework here!"

Neils quite right that Wind Farms don't produce any wicked, nasty, 'toxic' CO2 (not!).. but the trouble is, they don't produce much electricity either! And we have a government and an insane Energy Minister determined to invest billions of our money into erecting thousand and thousands of these useless monstrosities up and down the country, mostly for naught - because they simply won't meet even a fraction of our energy needs.

All this (plus lots of legislation and extra taxes from the EU) is going to send our leccy bills through the roof - some estimates reckon the average bill will be getting on for £5000 a year.

So what in effect Huhne and the government are saying, is that we'll all have to use *less* electricity, we'll have to pay much much more for what we *do* use .. but on top of all that - we'll *still* have to get used to regular power cuts!

That wouldn't be so bad, but the idiots are also DIS-investing in other forms of energy (such as nuclear) and winding down our existing coal-fired and nuclear power stations.

We are going to be in deep deep do-do a few years down the line.”