What square of land area of wind turbines would be needed in reasonable sites in the UK to in one year generate all UKs power demand?

July 30, 2009 / Dave Andrews / Demand manage, European Supergrid, Interconnectors, Load management, News Briefs, Renewables, Storage, Wind, Wind Energy

Baseload nuclear power not needed in an all-renewable future

Data

A 5 MW turbine rotor diameter is 126m ( from the Repower website http://www.repower.de/index.php?id=12&L=1 )

According to Martin Alder, a wind farm owner and developer:

Across wind turbine spacing = 3 x dia (Assume tower to tower)

Down wind turbine spacing = 5 x dia

According to Colin Palmer, of Wind Prospect, a leading wind farm developer, load factors of 30 – 35% onshore, and 40% offshore are readilly achievalbe.

So assume 33%.

Calculation

Take a 70 mile by 70 mile square. This equals 112 km by 112 km

So downwind, turbine spacing (tower to tower) will be 126 x 3 = 378m. Thus in 70 miles / 112 km we can accommodate (112 x 1000 / 378 ) +1 = 297.3 towers (allowing half blade length to protrude out of area at edges).

Similarly, cross wind, we need 5 x 126 = 630 m. Thus in 70 miles / 112 km we can accommodate (112 x 1000 /630) +1 = 178.8 towers (again allowing half blade length to protrude out of area at edges).

Thus a 70 mile by 70 mile square can accommodate 297.3 x 178.8 = 53,157 turbines..

At 5 MW each, these will generate at peak 265.7 GW.

Assuming reasonable sites and a 1/3 , 33% load factor, this will generate on average 79.73 GW.

Energy and carbon savings with trams – a short paper by Professsor Lewis Lesley

July 25, 2009 / Dave Andrews / Carbon, News Briefs, Policy, Sustainability, Trams, Transportation

“Getting urban car trips down from 70% to 50% would save about 5% of UK carbon emissions.”

Transport is an energy intensive activity, heavily dependent on oil (99.97%) and a significant emitter of carbon dioxide (30% of UK total). Exhortation and education can reduce car dependency but in the absence of draconian powers to force people to change travel modes, people will freely choosing sustainable alternatives is surely the best way? Market research and behavioural studies demonstrate that for short journeys, under 2 miles (50% UK car trips) walking and cycling are acceptable options, when there are safe and attractive routes. For longer urban journeys ( < 5 miles = 75% of UK car trips) public transport should be the alternative to car ? In the UK most urban public transport is by bus (80% of trips). Car users however are not willing to use buses. Studies by the US Transportation Research Board shows that on a like for like basis of frequency, travel speed, fares etc, buses attract 40% less car users than even old rail services

Professor Lewis Lesley and other Claverton think tank members discuss rail electrification and carbon savings

July 25, 2009 / Dave Andrews / News Briefs, Policy, Railways, Transportation

Most of the (sub)urban electric trains in UK are multiple units, where most if not all coaches have motors. The reason for this is the need to get high adhesion for rapid acceleration, by distributing the track forces to most if not all wheels. Rapid acceleration (and braking) are needed when stations are close together get a high service speed.
Inter City trains do not need urban rates of acceleration but high top speeds. Electric motor coaches are (much) more expensive than “trailer coaches”, so having one or two locomotives per train is a compromise over costs. THe TGV trains in France climb steeper gradients than most railways (3%) but 6 power bogies on an 18 coach (36 bogie) train is enough to get up the hills

Technology S-curves in renewable energy alternatives: Analysis and implications for industry and government

July 25, 2009 / Dave Andrews / Energy studies, News Briefs, Renewables

Plotting the performance of a technology against the money or effort invested in it most often yields an S-shaped curve: slow initial improvement, then accelerated improvement, then diminishing improvement. These S-curves can be used to gain insight into the relative payoff of investment in competing technologies, as well as providing some insight into when […]

Conference on Offshore wind power planning, economics and environment

July 23, 2009 / Dave Andrews / Featured, Wind, Wind Energy

Do you want to know more about planning issues and offshore wind and how they link up with other issues such as economics? Do you want to know about international comparisons between the UK and other EU states? Well come along to the University of Birmingham on August 28th which has a registration fee of […]

Relative / comparative costs of wind energy, nuclear energy, hydro power, coal power, natural gas, geothermal energy, and biomass

July 23, 2009 / Doitproperly / Coal fired, Cost of Electricity, Economics, Natural Gas, Nuclear, Policy, Power stations, PV, Solar, Wind, Wind Energy

In general it can be seen that there is not a lot to choose between the cost of wind energy, and coal, gas or nuclear. PV and CSP are considerablymore expensive however.

A Claverton Group Think Tank Member Discusses the Real Efficiency of a CCGT

July 22, 2009 / Dave Andrews / Natural Gas

“55% efficient CCGTs” (David Olivier) – no such thing. The headline efficiencies cited now are 58% but they deliberately play a marketing trick in pretending that the latent heat of vaporisation in the wettish steam within the OCGT exhaust that is finally vented to atmosphere after passing through the heat exchanger is somehow doing useful […]

Levelised costs of nuclear, wind, solar and coal power generation

July 19, 2009 / Dave Andrews / Energy studies, Featured

"They work and are quick to build: let the wind blow" Daily Telegraph, Thursday, July 16th – Dave Andrews is and independent energy consultant and Chair of the Claverton Group energy think tank

July 17, 2009 / Dave Andrews / Renewables, Wind, Wind Energy

Daily Telegraph, Thursday, July 16th, page 5

Wind farms as is well know only work when the wind blows. This means that a turbine will on average, produce electricity on only one day out of three. However, this is not of itself an overwhelming disadvantage – as is often claimed.

Wind farms can still compete with other forms of electricity generation because although turbines are expensive to build, they have very low running costs.

The other argument against turbines is that they require back up when the wind is not blowing. This, too, is true. However, again it is not really a problem, since the power station needed to provide backup have already been built, and are cheap to keep on standby. Wind farms just make sure we use less of the fossil fuel than we would otherwise, therefore cutting emissions.

James Berkin compiling a list of all organisations or individuals supporting the supergrid concept

July 4, 2009 / Dave Andrews / European Supergrid, House of Commons, Interconnectors, News Briefs

James Birkin writes as below: there is now a wiki at (http://claverton.wikispaces.com/+HVDC+-+List+of+interested+persons+and+organisations at which you can add target organistations) Dear Attendee, I am compiling a list of all organisations or individuals supporting the concept of a Supergrid.