Renewable energy sources - the good, the bad and the ugly

Following on from a brief discussion in another thread, I thought I would start this one off for us to discuss the pros and cons of renewable energy sources.

@gks you had some interesting points in regard to this, not least the aggregates used and the construction of wind farms

 

And not be built on flood plains or in green belts.

 

Solar is almost certainly the least damaging of all renewables in my opinion, not least as much of them can be recovered and recycled at the end of their life cycle. Wind is hugely damaging in many ways - primarily ecologically due to their construction but also that they are reported to be damaging to local bird life. Finally, there is the fact that there are huge amounts of them that cannot be recovered/recycled.

The situation at Drax is just bonkers, and the statement that there is no obvious climate benefit is a massive understatement as much of the biomass pellets are processed and shipped half way around the world. As you rightly point out, that £2m per day subsidy could have built many good quality, well insulated homes with gardens, solar panels, grey water recovery and so on.

Hydro is one of the areas where we should have done considerably more work, be that pumped storage or natural waterflow. We will always need to have some sort of fast start steam turbine power stations in addition to renewables (particularly if solar was to increase) to stabilise the grid and for recovery from brown/blackouts.

Like everything in this country, we have underinvested for decades whilst frittering money away elsewhere.

 

I've been saying for years that all new builds should be compelled to have solar panels (where possible). They cost comparatively very little to install on a new build. We have had solar panels for quite some years. They have repaid the cost of the outlay, produce electricity for nothing (I presume they, or the inverter, may need some replacement/maintenance at some time) and don't interfere with our way of life. A win-win situation.

What we do need is a cost effective, small and efficient battery storage system to store the unused electricity. Currently the excess production goes back into the national grid (we get paid a small amount for it) but I would prefer to be able to use all of it as and when I need it. Also, if there is a power cut (we got quite a few), our system can't use the power produced by the panels and it is wasted - and more annoyingly, we also have the power cut although we can produce electricity. A silly situation.

 

I certainly agree there - in fairness, my thinking was more toward having them on buildings and not taking up farmland. Thanks for the link too - I will have a read at that a bit later.

That is the sad thing, there are all of these things available but they are often not put in because of cost.

I am not so sure about the hot water ones, but the electrical ones have improved considerably. There was a project (ongoing, albeit slowly) with our work premises to explore how many of our buildings could sustain solar and how much energy they would provide and even the conservative estimates were quite remarkable. Don't get me wrong, they would never produce as much as we consume, but they make a sizeable dent in it. I am not sure if/when we will get to the installation stage however as Covid has put a lot of nails into things like that