Solar sites must not delete future needed land

In the light of 7 billion of us now on earth it would seem prudent to be as careful as possible with the use of land.
The footprint of solar, where it is otherwise unused or useless is a good sourse of green energy but where it covers land that may be needed there is an imperative to find other sites.
My Wasphead concept provides this at sea in conjunction with other natural harvesting of energies. The nature of placement of solar panels (eg 1x1 metres ) on such an island would be such, like tiles overlapping on a roof, that these allow potable water collection at the same time.
The footprint of the island, being approx 10 sq kilometers would accommodate some 1,750,000 panel of the size mentioned above.

Growing Dismay with Wind Turbines.

It was a cynical view that wind turbines would never repay the  power that which was used to make them. That may not be so far from the truth now as factoring the cover from other power sources when they don't work is being realised. Such cover, say in the case of clean gas power stations, in being on standby apparently cannot be turned off even when unneeded. Thus some of the shine of their being the 'green' is lost.

Wasphead Overview

This diagram compacts, in one, the facets that the Wasphead offers in terms of renewable energies - the captions may be on the small side but it is hoped much will be self-explanatory.

Your Tax Is Gone With The Wind

Sometime back I estimated the mutiple by which wind farm energy costs are greater than clean gas was 15 - a recent estimate by Christopher Booker was 22. This stagering difference becomes exagerated when one thinks that the proliferation of wind turbine emplacement will need to be covered by a new generation of clean gas, oil or nuclear power stations.
What worries me is that the Government is on a 'kudos' trip. The recent 'scrappage' of cars and purchase of newer more efficient ones through grants to wit. Did anyone ever relate the expectant life of the cars being scrapped and the fuel they would use in that life with the formidable expenditure of energy spent on producing the new car?
In this way,  through the offices of Ed Milliband, past minister for Energy and now his replacement, Chris Huhne we are tied into a spending spree which officially is around £200 billion but which in the nature of such estimates, conveniently tight for public consumption, will, by the time span to 2020, become at least half a trillion pounds.

SCANDALOUS USE OF TAX PAYERS MONEY TO LITTLE USE

The cost of covering the windturbines when they are not working is highlighted remarkably by Christopher Booker's latest comment

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/8612716/Proof-that-the-Government-is-tilting-at-windmills.html
It seems the cost is not just financial but the carbon cost is great too deleting much of the 'carbon free' energy which is the point of the turbines.
The estimated monetary costs naturally do not reflect the final costs so what will the final bill be.
The Government is absurdly locked in, continuing to lock itself into a scandalously expensive and relatively unproductive program.
THE CONCEPT OF BY - PASSING ELECTRICITY TO PRODUCE A STORED WATERHEAD AT  SEA THAT CAN BE USED WHEN THE GRID NEEDS DICTATE NEEDS SERIOUS INVESTIGATION. THE RENEWABLE ENERGY INDUSTRY SHOULD LOOK AT UNDERWRITING A FEASABILITY STUDY IMMEDIATELY.

Germany Backs Off From Nuclear- Why?

Yesterday’s announcement that Germany is going to wind down its nuclear dependence for power will cause some consternation to its advocates. Patently the events in Japan are at work but perhaps Germany knows of other issues behind the scenes that it is not letting on.

As most avid nuclear proponents will be those who want to sell their technologies and hardware it is only reasonable that they will underplay, hide, obscure, and even dismiss issues that threaten their lobbying and sales – not millions – billions.

 Does the public really know what happens in nuclear power stations - it is hard to think that only the workers at Fukushima  were dilatory in their duty of care and recording - are would be whistle-blowers sworn to secrecy about near misses, mal-events ?  Perhaps Germany knows more!

Who would think that the mindless acceptance, by governments especially here in Britain, of the present wind turbine technology, as evidenced by the last decade of spending many billions for its installations, would be confounded by the obvious: that the wind does not blow at the behest of national grid needs, and that the electricity it harvests cannot, as yet, be economically stored.  Also this government still hasn’t, and the last never did, announce the cost of so called ‘on call’ gas, oil, nuclear, coal stations to ‘cover’ when the wind doesn’t blow – ‘don’t do it - it won’t be popular’.

 Super-grids and grid highways will only ameliorate peak needs, never solve them – these like so much muddled thinking around renewable energies emerge as recent innovations  to rationalise the profligate spending of what maybe, at least in all Europe, trillions.

Germany is already regretting the wind turbines it has, in economic terms at least and it is hard to believe it will risk reliance on its energy needs from nuclear Poland and France.

Is it just pressure from the Greens or is it something else?

It really does make the mind boggle as to what really is at the back of this decision.

Renewable energies make sense if their harvest can be stored.

Using wind wave and tidal power to  produce a  water – head, stored in dams,  that can be tapped to produce electricity at will makes sense.

It can be done at sea by the means of the dams I propose.

None of the technologies involved are new– but the mix and the site of application is!

When Does a Wind Turbine Pay Back its Carbon Cost?

Perhaps facietiously put but a slur against wind turbines used to be that they don't produce the energy in their life span that was taken to produce them.
In Wales it is planned to scar the country side with 800 two megawatt wind turbines at a cost of at least 2 billion pounds which will produce 300 megawatts allowing for their inherent overall inefficiency.  A new gas fired station (and therefore a lesser carbon footprint than coal ) power station in Plymouth costing a quarter of this is producing three times this output.  This means the cost of wind turbine energy is 15 times that of the gas fired station.
Allowing that a hefty component of any engineered product is the cost of the energy involved in it production it would be nice to know the energy component involved in the production of these 800 wind turbines and over what span of time will carbon pay back occur and will they start to actually be carbon free.
The slur may not now be that facietious after all. An interesting view on this comes from Christopher Booker .here

Other Ripple Effects from Japan’s Disastrous Earthquake and Tsunami

The Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami will reverberate through the plans of all countries planning carbon free energies. Inspections and  re- evaluation of existing nuclear plant would seem obligatory and planned new installations reviewed in the  light of the what is happening in Japan. It is apparent that some of the problems there could have been mitigated if fundamental mores of inspection, upkeep and review had occurred and cavalier documentation had been noted. It is patent that possible outcomes from human error and weakness should be locked in to future designs and that feedback check mechanisms should be built in.

The curious will wonder what the non- nuclear ‘fall out’ will be on wind turbine and other renewable energy scenario. Probably positive – almost certainly these will have considered the Japanese disaster a fillip to their cause.

However those for some of those favouring the renewable energies the effect of the disaster is a two edged sword; the one above and the other being that if nuclear is jettisoned the remaining  power sources to cope with ‘off peak’ or no wind situations will coal, gas or oil fired stations - not really solving the problem of producing low carbon energy.

This may indeed be the time to think seriously about storing renewable energies in the manner I have proposed.

Concerns Over Proposed International Grids For Wind Turbine Energy

    The philosophy for creating the plethora of wind turbines which are at the will of the weather needs to be defended. Sadly a country having wind turbines is almost like having a national airline despite the economics.
    Though on balance, and accepting at least by default that global warming is a reality, the production of turbines on the present scale, on land and on and off shore, on the present scale in North Western Europe  is alarming and attempts to smoothen out supplies from them between countries therein by developing an international grid can be a mutual disaster.
    All can be seen to be increasingly at risk at the will of wind. Weather patterns can affect many turbines at once in these geologically small areas and all the grid connnections in the world will be useless when massive flat weather patterns embrace this part of Europe.
    International grid scenarios also will be accompanied in competition for production excesses, and they have to be excesses, of power in one county or another, and political termoil or fractious relationships, and financial vulnerability could affect such smooth running.
   The rush to spend billions on wind power is not concurrently being backed up by the production of reliable conventional power plant and the cost of these appears to be ignored.
    A better system is the storage of the wind's energy on site as I propose.

Considerations against larger conventional offshore wind turbines

One has to wonder about the sense of increasing the size of rotors. Allowing that the drive is for increased rotor efficiency the variable speeds encountered by the blades over a population of wind laminations in such a large coverage must surely cause concerns over resulting vibrations of blades and towers. There already exists a small population of disasters. Also the increase in the size of the towers to accommodate these bigger rotors also increases the gap in what is now potentially a spectrum of different winds. Also the population of such towers in a wind farm must be less due to the cover effect.
No doubt costs of delivering electric output to land per unit power produced at sea will decrease, but by how much?
I propose that eliminating the generating nacelle and replacing it with a water pump at the base of the tower means the towers can be lighter and cheaper in construction eg lattice pylons. The water pump being at sea level allows easier servicing and eliminates the inherent problem of servicing the cells at great heights and the inevitable issues of sea water and electricity.
In my concept of an island of water the height provided for turbines thereon (a base some 1,000 above sea level) provides more consistent wind pressure and the island contours will increase that again. The density of turbines can be increased as the contours result in less cover.