Wind power vs. Nuclear...
A short piece from Christopher Booker in the Daily Telegraph in the UK...
A further huge question mark has been raised over the Government's plan to build 7,000 offshore wind turbines round Britain's coasts, to help meet its EU target of 15 percent of our electricity from â renewables' by 2020.
The director of renewable generation for Centrica, our largest windfarm developer, last week revealed that the cost of this plan to create 33,000 megawatts (MW) of capacity has doubled in three years, from £40 billion to £80 billion.
But since, thanks to fluctuations in the wind, offshore turbines generate on average only 27.5 per cent of capacity, the actual power produced by these turbines would be only 9,000MW, putting its price at £8.8 million per MW.
The latest nuclear power station being built in Finland at a cost of £2.7 billion will produce 1600MW, 24 hours a day, representing £1.7 million per MW. In other words, six nuclear power stations could produce more electricity than all those windfarms for only a fifth of the price.
If Centrica really wants to help Britain keep its lights on, it could, for £80 billion, build 30 "carbon-free" nuclear power stations to generate 48,000MW of electricity, more than the average 47,000MW now produced by all Britain's power plants.
But since this would not count towards meeting our EU renewables target, to do anything so sensible would put us in serious breach of EU law.
posted by GayandRight @ 9:56 PM
2 Comments:
I've never thought wind power would be particularly appealing as a commercial power supply.
Certainly selling wind generators to individual homes makes much more sense than attempting to augment the power grid with wind generation.
Not only would the nuclear plants be operating 24 hrs per day, the wind generators would only be operating while the wind blows. Thus the nuclear plants in addition, reduce the otherwise base amount of generating capacity required while the wind generators do not. This has the effect of driving the capital; cost of the wind generators even higher. How can the public be so brainwashed.
Lewis
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