The way forward?

I think there's two thinks going on here. One is technical, one is political.

Technical: The tide carries huge forces, and in that moving water, there is lots of salt, which leads to corrosion, sand and silt, wearing out and clogging up moving parts, and larger objects, leading to physical damage. I recognise these things as obstacles, but I feel sure there's enough brains in the engineering pool to overcome these problems.

Political: Simple. You can't see them. You can't point at them and say 'oh, so they are investing in renewable energy, just like they said they were'.

 

I was thinking the same thing Jenny. Seemed like not a week went by without seeing some bobbing duck device or estuary barrage proposal for wave/tide generated electricity . It must be the best method for renewable energy . I would really like to see a full cost analysis for wind turbines. With the amount of energy needed to produce these huge structures and maintain them for their limited and erratic power delivery , are they really an answer to the problem ? Or are they just environmental bling , to make everyone look and feel good.

This has recently happened in NI

 

Hows the local scrap man going to get that on this van

 

Personally I prefer the proper jobs too. Those "tree" thingies are hideous.

They are even more expensive to maintain than the wind turbines. Both are just gesture politics.
It's high time we went green and invested in nuclear.

 

oooh - was it you who knocked it over Woo?

 

SO many birds are injured by these things.

 

We as a people in general make a choice. We want power to power our lifestyles, and it has to be generated somehow. The simple truth is there is NO absolutely environmentally perfect way to meet our energy demands.

Video clips such as this one, with a wind turbine striking a bird, is great for those that don't like wind turbines. Some of whom may sometimes choose to suddenly care about the wild birds when it suits them, while turning a blind eye to the much greater threat to wild birds from things like our carefree approach to rubbish disposal, habitat destruction, or even the keeping of certain predatory animals as pets and then paying no attention to where those animals go or what they might be doing.

But the in my opinion, while there are many strong arguments both for and against wind turbines, the occasional bird strike is not a strong reason against wind turbines, unless we are going to equally condemn all other options. Personally I'm in favour of more nuclear power stations being built. They wont result in many bird strikes. But they'll inevitably be habitat destruction. We could go for solar arrays. There's a good one in Spain that uses concave mirrors to concentrate the sunshine onto a boiler. Its a very efficient idea (if you happen to have a load of spare land in an area rich in sunshine). Environmental concerns have been raised over that too, with someone having filmed a bird literally start to smoulder and die in mid flight after straying right into the most concentrated part of the array.

If we're going to keep consuming as we do, we can't get too upset about the odd bird fatality. Its pure hypocrisy to get upset about that having been made aware of it by using something that needs electricity, such as your computer, and all the infrastructure that makes up the internet. Presumably the person that filmed it didn't throw away their electrical gadgets right then and there and vow never to use electricity ever again.

So while we can't get hung up on the little incidents, we should look at the big picture. We probably are not all about to give away all our stuff and go and live in the woods, so we're going to continue to need electricity. That means we're going to keep harming things to some extent. So the debate should be, what option(s) does the least harm. Wind turbines may or may not fit into the mix somewhere.

 

Apparently in Sweden they burn the rubbish to make power!!

 

Picture breakfast time in an average street, how many folk are having a shower, flushing the loo, filling the kettle and so on? It'd pretty much be a constant flow at peak times, exactly the time when the electric is needed to boil that kettle and heat that shower water.

 

I'd like to add that my wind turbine has yet to kill any damn seagulls.

 

I'm a great believer in you dont get nothing, for nothing.

And I cant help thinking that although the idea sounds good at first sight one major drawback would have to be reduced flow due to the turbine causing resistance in the pipes.
Mains pressure is pretty low around here due to the amount of new houses being built and added onto existing water mains.
As I say it sounds good.

 

Agreed, you wouldn't want it in an area that's already got low pressure, but there's a fair few cities fed by girt reservoirs that could take the hit and not notice it.

 

Indeed they do. Unlike here, they are also happy to embrace both new and old ideas to get the maximum efficiency. For example, many new build properties feature a ground source heat pump and underfloor heating. Ground source heat pumps can give out as much as 4 times as much energy in heat as they use to move that heat. Note I said 'move' and not 'create'. The technology is not magic. It is a giant fridge in reverse. Liquid is pumped as vapour through a buried giant radiator, then condensed in the boiler, effectively mopping up latent heat out of the ground, several feet down where the weather doesn't reach and plant roots aren't affected.

At the same time, where its appropriate, they will make extensive use of green roofs. Its like free, self sustaining insulation for the house, that also provides habitat for wildlife.

I'd like to say they're a clever bunch, but really it should all be standard stuff. There's nothing really clever about any of it. Its other nations that stupid rather than Sweden that's clever. If you think about it logically even for one second, its obvious. We wine on about there not being enough land to produce our own food, then we have thousands of hectares of flat or almost flat roof space just standing bare, leaching energy from the building it covers. We bang on about increased flooding, and then we cover the land in tarmac and concrete leaving fewer places for the water to soak away to, and completely ignoring the fact that most floods in the UK (last ones maybe an exception) are usually the result of short but heavy bursts of rain that overwhelm the drains. A few inches of compost and vegetation on every suitable flat (or nearly flat) roof space would soak up and buffer a lot of that water so that the drains would not be overwhelmed, but those in charge of tackling flood problems overlook all these points, and just try to build a bigger drain, or issue a few sand bags, all while the various local planning departments will be busy approving more concrete and tarmac faster than anyone can improve any flood defences.

Sorry, slight tangent there, but my point is that the bigger picture is not just about how we meet our future energy needs, but about the bigger picture, to reduce our energy demands, reduce our environmental impact as a whole, but without reducing the quality of life we've become accustomed to.