“"Thank you for your comment.
It has been sent to the moderation queue and should appear on the site soon. " -- That was last Friday. Still waiting...”

“This item of news is getting a little old, but I had to comment on Johnnies comment that turbines start to turn at 7-10 mp/h. They might start turning at that speed, but they don't generate any worthwhile power.
The manufacturers rate there full out put at a wind speed of about 30mp/h. As the power generate d varies exponentially as the cube of the speed. 7mph would yield1% of full power. if any. In fact a t so low a wind speed they would be drawing power from the grid. These things are a scam perpetrated on gullible politicians.”

“Jonny - that article is refering to small scale installation and can at best only be described as a guide.

You would have to refer to the turbine manufacture and the specific blade and gearing design to be able to quote a figure.

The smaller home turbines do operate at lower speeds, but these are designed for that and put out equally small amounts of power.

And I have no idea what you mean when you say gas is a sustainable fuel - it is a carbon based fossil fuel, usually associated with oil and or condensates and will run out just the same. The North sea is already almost empty, we import huge amounts of gas from the European continent and Russia and are building multi billion dollar plants to liquify it on the opposite side of the globe to ship it back to the UK

Sorry, but you need to look up what sustainable actually means!”

“7-10mph is speed most turbines start generating, off the coast this usually the average or slightly more
http://www.bwea.com/noabl/
Windspeed is much higher, at higher altitude, hence turbines are built high,
quite simple really


Our boys with chinooks & cable systems should be helping fit them on the peaks,dales & highlands with better pay, instead of being wasted in Iraq& Afghanistan mainly for oil snafu.
Well done centrica& government on this, gas is also the most sustainable of fossil fuels, http://www.fordonsgas.se/English_Home_DXNI-779_.aspx”

“BRILLIANT!!!

We could get a massive bit of elastic and tie it to them. Then we can charge people a tenner a go to fire huge rocks at Norway out of the world's biggest catapult.

Money Spinning and Fun - Let's go for it... Perhaps we could raise £7m if we fired them at Iceland.”

“A correction to my piece I meant to say 14% not !$%. I calculated the output for that wind speed. Problem is The generators don't start producing anything until the wind is at least 15km/h. The output would not 2% it would be nil. nadder nothing.”

“Hey Pensioner - that's my idea!

;o) -thumbs up-”

“GT why are we not allowed to comment on the dust monitoring of Immingham docks?”

“Firstly, how much of the £725 000 000-oo is provided by the taxpayer in government subsidies? Why will real power stations have to buy this power at such a high cost?

And secondly, going back to Dale Vince: he could undermine all us engineers at a stroke by placing on the public domain real time telemetry showing the output of his wind turbines. He should not try to hide this information from us........we engineers and tax payers have contributed to his farm. We are compelled to pay the highest price for electricity to support his otherwise non-commercial wind turbines.

So come on Dale just give us the website with the following "real time info:"

1 How many of your turbines are generating.

2 How much are they generating...for us engineers please give us MVA, MVAr, and MWs

3 At any given time who is supplying your fictitious domestic home load...you or the grid, what % are you supplying?

4 We engineers would like to know your machines load factors.........design wind speed, minimum wind speed, and maximum wind speed.

5 As your machines seem to defy the cube law (by your statements), do your machine output curves follow a linear relationship with the wind speed, or do they follow an exponential curve?

As some one else said, you may be too busy to answer us in real engineers language rather than your normal press release speak. If subsidies and ROCs were finished today, so would your wind farm.....they look good, but that is all.

I look forward to Dale or Centrica demonstrating to us engineers that the cube law does not apply, you do not suffer intermittency, and you can follow electrical demand by increasing the wind to your farms!

Sooner hopefully, or more likely later, the wind energy subsidies will be exposed as a financial fiasco comparable to the banking crisis.

If the hundred billion were invested in nuclear power, we would slash our carbon footprint, reduce our reliance on external energy supplies and that damn fickle wind!”

“Birdy! Tides twice a day are not good enough. Where does the power come from when the tide is reversing. Wind speed in GY this morning !$ km/h. This will give an output of 2% of full power from any wind turbine around GY . Not a lot is it. Wind is a bust let's face it.”