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1)They do kill birds, but... does anyone know the number of birds killed by oil polution?
2)It's true. I wouldn't want one in my backyard, but... I can live with one at 300 meters away.
3)If only we had some sort of grid.

If the wind speed surpasses 25 m/sec turbines are shut down to protect them. http://www.bwea.com/pdf/briefings/technology05_small.pdf. In this case there would be little solar power and no wind power. Also a storm may just be heavy cloud cover with significant snowfall.

There's no way that is end-to-end costs, a substantial portion of the nuclear costs are in the decommissioning.

A British Wind Energy Association report gives an average generation cost of onshore wind power of around 3.2 pence (between US 5 and 6 cents) per kWÂh (2005).

Between 5 and 6 cents, not 40 cents (very old tech?), your figures are from where?

Source: BWEA report on onshore wind costs (PDF).
http://www.bwea.com/pdf/briefings/target-2005-small.pdf

Funny, I couldn't remember the source of my 1/3 loss, so I threw a few words at google, and found the same reference that you did - 7.2%.

But the funny part is that THAT citation isn't exactly authoritative, either. Further searching found that in India, the rate is as low as 70% while the state of Deleware declares that "70 percent of the energy in the fuels used to generate electricity is lost" and in the UK it's supposedly about 2% lost in transmission.

Wikipedia isn't the definitive answer, folks, even if it is a good starting point!

Also, AFAIK the turbines shut down at wind speeds >25 m/s / ~55mph
Ah, found it here: Wind turbines start operating at wind speeds of 4 to 5 metres per second (around 10 miles an hour) and reach maximum power output at around 15 metres/second (around 33 miles per hour). At very high wind speeds, i.e. gale force winds, (25 metres/second, 50+ miles/hour) wind turbines shut down.

(as they can be quite loud)

From http://www.bwea.com/energy/myths.html

Myth: Wind farms are noisy Fact: The evolution of wind farm technology over the past decade has rendered mechanical noise from turbines almost undetectable with the main sound being the aerodynamic swoosh of the blades passing the tower. There are strict guidelines on wind turbines and noise emissions to ensure the protection of residential amenity. These are contained in the scientifically informed ETSU Working Group guidelines 199617 and must be followed by wind farm developers, as referenced in national planning policy for renewables18. The best advice for any doubter is to go and hear for yourself!

http://www.windpower.org/en/tour/env/enpaybk.htm
http://www.wind-works.org/articles/EnergyBalanceofWindTurbines.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power
http://www.bwea.com/energy/myths.html

Here's a useful briefing paper on dealing with intermittency in wind power. It's a UK document, and has some hard numbers about wind plants in Europe.

When wind power is covering less than 10% of the load, the UK study says no special arrangements are necessary to provide extra capacity to cover periods of low wind. I've seen 15% mentioned in US discussions. There's enough excess dispatchable generating capacity ("dispatchable" means you get output when you ask for it) to provide backup power for 10-15% wind. Above that, it becomes more of a problem.

I've seen some US studies which indicate that even if wind power is averaged across a 1000 mile area (most of the Midwest and Southwest US), about 5% of the time, the whole collection of wind farms is generating very little output. So just running transmission lines around won't solve the problem. You need extra dispatchable capacity.

That dispatchable capacity is usually natural gas, hydro, or pumped storage. Dispatchable capacity of this type is typically a source where the installed equipment is relatively cheap but the fuel is expensive. In practice, this means gas turbines. If you have dams around that collect water but don't have enough continuous flow to be full-time hydropower sources, they can be effective intermittent sources. The California Water Project uses some of its reservoirs that way; they generate power during peak periods, but not all the time, because that would drain the reservoir. Some California Water Project sites pump water uphill at night, when electricity is cheap, and profitably run it back down during peak periods in the daytime. Pure pumped storage plants are rare; the US has two.

Solar, of course, is not dispatchable. Nuclear plants are normally run full time, since they're mostly capital cost; the fuel cost is small.

hear them ??? Windmills are silent.
http://www.bwea.com/ref/noise.html
"the sound of a working wind farm is actually less than normal road traffic or an office"

I submit that you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about.

Everything I can find says that wind farms eventually create between 20 and 40 times the energy needed to build them. 40 times over, 50 times over, 17-39 times over.

Your sources?

Why wait those three years when there are wave power generators made by a company called Pelamis waiting for full testing? They have alreadty supplied electricity to a grid in England This system seems much less likely to impact on any change in global sea temperatures. Plus, it is definitely not vaporware!

This is the formula for calculating the energy of our atmosphere in terms of kinetic force. http://www.bwea.com/edu/energy.html I wonder how well this "Plamp" (plane-blimp - "Plamp" sounded better than "Blane" IMO) will do trying to hover in a 25 knot cross wind given the friction to our atmosphere on its' external hull and the enormous windswept area of its fusilage.

Beats me why so many people seem to keen to build wind farms.

Surely, there is too much wind in the world already (witness recent events) and farming more of the damn stuff seems like utter lunacy to me.

Anyhow, couldn't we just import some foreign wind from some windy place?

I can't answer for wave technology, but wind farms are extremely energy efficient. A turbine will typically "pay off" in energy terms about three months after construction.

This differs fairly seriously from photovoltaics, which fail to pay off in a 25 year life-span.

For a bit more info on some of the hype surrounding wind farms, the British Wind Energy Association has some good info

We use coal, oil, and natural gas because they're CHEAPER than other energy sources. When they actually DO start to run short the price will rise and we'll (incrementally) switch to using something else.

There can be other reasons for reigning back on carbon fuel usage - such as the effects of greenhouse gases and pollution. Also there are already increasingly viable alternatives - but these will find it hard to compete with dirty cheap "dig'n'burn" fuels - hence the argument for starting to impose green taxes on such polluting energy sources, and pushing for alternatives. It is almost immaterial as to whether there are hidden reserves - we know for sure that they will run out in the not too distant future, so why not bite the bullet now, and make life easier for future generations?

Alternatives? Wind can generate electricity at under £0.03/kw/hr
(British Wind Energy Association page)
(American Wind Energy Association page)
Solar towers in hot regions could supply limitless clean cheap power, Tidal power, Wave power.. Its all doable now.

Yes space exploration should be persued, although most of the benefits will be in the longer term..

I thought this might be worth posting in its entirety..
From http://www.bwea.com/ref/stop.html

What happens when the wind stops blowing?
Much of the following information is taken from an article by
DJ Milborrow in WindDirections Volume XIV, No.3 April 1995.

Wind turbines generate electricity from a fuel that is free and will never run out, but which isn't available all the time. This factor of 'non-firm' or intermittent' generation is often cited as a detriment of wind energy, with a popular question being 'what happens when the wind stops blowing'. Not a lot really, as electricity continues to be provided by other forms of generation, such as gas or nuclear. Our electricity system is mostly made up of large power stations, and the system has to be able to cope if one of these large plants goes out of action. Equally, the system is well used to dealing with fluctuations in demand, such as millions of people putting the kettle on during commercial breaks of a popular soap on TV!

The fluctuations caused by non-firm generation of electricity from wind turbines are not noticeable above the normal rises and falls in demand on the system. In fact, it is possible to have up to 10% of the country's needs met by intermittent energy sources such as wind energy without having to make any significant changes to the way the system operates.

For more detailed information on how the system operates and what happens when the wind stops blowing, read on.

Is it a problem?
The UK's power system relies on a diverse collection of different types of generation. No individual power plant is 100% reliable, but the system as a whole is very reliable.

There are numerous power stations in the UK. There are around 23 large coal fired plant (some of which also burn some gas or oil), 17 nuclear plants, 8 large oil plants and 11 new combined cycle gas turbines (CCGTs) and several others. Large in this context means over 100MW. (The percentage of generation by fuel type in 1995 was 48% coal, 23% nuclear, 17% CCGT and open cycle gas turbines, 9% interconnectors and 1% oil and the remainder hydro and the new renewables).

Whilst wind still makes up a very small proportion of our total electricity generating capacity coping with the intermittent nature of the wind poses no problem in relation to the other fluctuations in supply and demand which the system copes with. It is very small in comparison with the problems of meeting demand if one large power station is suddenly put out of action.

Even if wind energy capacity rises to 15,000 MW, i.e. enough to meet 13% of the UK's electricity demand during 1994, it would still be a smaller threat than one conventional power station being unexpectedly unavailable.

Putting it into perspective
The other threats to the system, which far outweigh the variability of wind are

* Failure of the cross channel link. The UK is connected to France by two 1000MW circuits which periodically fail. Loss of one circuit occurs more frequently than the loss of both, but neither occurrence causes any significant upset to system operations.
* Steam turbine trips - these occur for many reasons, including false alarms. The largest stets have a rating of 660 MW and, again, the system is managed so that these cause no problems.
* Transformer failures - when these occur on the national grid, significant imbalances can occur and load sometimes needs to be shed as a result.
* Thunderstorms - National Grid network circuits can trip out if struck by lightning.
* Unexpected increases in demand - e.g. dark storm clouds can cause a sudden increase in lighting demand. Most increases in demand are predictable and so pose less of a problem.

The imagined threat due to wind generation is simply not in the same league as any of these occurrences.

The output from a wind farm is smoother than the output from a single machine, and the output from a dispersed win

No. I didnt argue with your mathematics - I was aware that power generation is proportional to the square of the wind velocity, at least with current generation mills. My point is that in practice it has been found that wind power is far more consistant than first feared - if you have a reasonable sized grid, and the variability drops as the grid gets larger. See http://www.bwea.com/ref/stop.html - the suggest 13% not as an absolute maximum, but what could be integrated easily without big changes. Newer data (ie from operational farms in Hawaii) suggest this figure could be larger still. Note that 2 gw of pumped hydro reserve can drop in/out within 15 seconds! If you can increase that..

Also my suggestion was to use generation of hydrogen as a method of evening peaks & using surplus off-peak power. Certainly to go to 50-100% alt energy product requires changes to our energy system & grids - but the technology is there..

outages for coal and nuclear plants are typically scheduled months in advance.

Outages on lines to these stations however are unpredictable and not so rare, so a reserve must be kept operational.

Also from the FAQ: An average for a new onshore wind farm in a good location is 3-4 pence per unit, competitive with new coal (2.5-4.5p) and cheaper than new nuclear (4-7p). Much cheaper when you consider all the pollutants that those other fuels generate..

Calculations can show that an ideal (no friction in parts) wind generator has a power to surface area ratio equal to 8/27 of the density of air times the cube of the wind velocity. This means that a 20% reduction is the wind velocity will lead to roughly a 50% reduction in power output from a given wind plant. For this reason alone it should be obvious that wind plants are only useful for reducing the load of other plants (as long as they can come back up to full capacity or have peaking plants standing by). By no means can wind be only energy generator for an area.

Not true. Check out the faq on the British Wind Energy Association page - in practice, on a large grid, the "averaging" process means that variability in wind-power is much less of a problem than originally envisaged - the wind is always blowing somewhere, and there are sites with pretty constant, strong winds. It is also a myth that other sources are "reliable" - outages from traditional Coal/Gas/Nuclear plants (or the power lines to them) are common, and have to be catered for. In reality keeping a "stable" grid is a complex balancing act - keeping a minimum spinning reserve for possible outages.

In practice, however, we could have 200%+ of our energy need from offshore wind - and the USA has similar (largely unsurveyed) potentials. But, what do you do with all that excess off-peak power? Turn it into Hydrogen to run cars, and/or use off-peak power to charge car batteries.

Remember, going Nuclear doesnt solve one of the biggest problems - replacing polluting petrol car engines - you still need to tackle the problem of storage/conversion for cars. That problem remains the same, whether the electricity comes from Wind or Nuclear..

Coal can be Black or maybe Brown, but never Green..

But seriously, there is now a massive power struggle for power - all the different interest groups are jockeying for position to be the next big "green" fuel.

My own 2c (per kw/hour) is that the very simple obvious non-polluting green alternatives - wind, tide, wave, solar, etc - have quietly evolved to a stage where they could take over as the western worlds main source of energy. Why do we need to mess around with nuclear/coal/oil? All the supporting technologies have developed sufficiently that they are either already economical, or at worse should be soon with a little more work. If you just take wind alone, the latest batch of offshore wind farms are contracted to supply power to the UK grid at 0.03 pounds/kilowatt/hour - pretty competitive, and set to come down with scale. (British Wind Energy Association page) (American Wind Energy Association page)

The latest windmills do not present loading problems for the grid, probably kill less wildlife than other things (ie tall structures in general, glass windows, cars, oil rigs etc..) & do not really mess up the landscape for 99.99% of people.

The UK alone has many times its energy needs already available in potential off-shore sites. The USA and Australia have similar huge (and worryingly largely unsurveyed) potentials - off & on shore.

And then you can look at other sources - tide, wave, solar.. For instance, Australia is building 1 km high towers that can generate power by solar power.

Ok, back to coal - can it be green? Well if you can safely bury 100% (or close to) emmissions - dont forget all the other by-products (CO, SO2, mercury, lead.. ) and you mine it in a green manner, you would have something resembling a green source of power for a short while - until all the easily minable resources were gone, then renewables become cheaper anyway..

Nuclear? Oh sure its "cheap" - until you have to decommission the sites, and get rid of the waste safely - which has to be looked after for centuries.. Billions of pounds were wasted on Nuclear power generation in the UK to no avail - the money would have been much better spent on researching renewables, which have had a pittance by comparison.

May not even be that necessary, since there are enough on/off-shore sites to supply many times our electricity needs from wind - and in fact real-life usage has shown wind power is much more constant/reliable than first supposed. Just make sure that we have "oversupply", and yes, use the spare to make hydrogen fuel for cars, or store by pumping at hydro electric plants..

(British Wind Energy Association page)
(American Wind Energy Association page)

It has been estimated that 1 billion birds a year are killed by.. glass! Pretty much all tall structures cause some level of bird-deaths. *Every* power option has an environmental impact - it may be something we all have to accept as a cost of cheap clean power..

(British Wind Energy Association page)
(American Wind Energy Association page)

From anti-wind groups like Country Guardian, a very small organisation campaigning against wind energy . Country Guardian used to operate out of a building owned by British Nuclear Fuels.

What options do we have today that we didn't have in the 1950's? How many of those are capable of outright replacing the Coal/Oil/Nuclear infrastructure?

Offshore wind power could almost do it alone for the UK..
(British Wind Enrgy Association page)

There are a few million Ukranians who would disagree with you there.. There is still the nagging question as to what happens to the waste - the UK has given up on its nuclear program as a result.

We have barely begun to exploit natural renewable resources - just one example - offshore wind power could supply *several* times the electicity needs for the UK (British Wind Enrgy Association page).

Its an old debate, but the points are still valid..

Yes.

Even with current technology, the worlds best selling electric car, the Gem, runs at a cost of about 0.25p/mile - compared to 30p/mile for a typical petrol car. (BBC news)

Just needs a bit of a push to get the milage between charges up. My own idea is that batteries be "leased" from garages, so that you drive into a garage and swap for a fully charged one instantly, for some sort of fee. No new technology needed for that, just some basic mechanics.

But electricity comes from fossil fuels you say? The UK has enough offshore wind-power to generate all our energy needs several times over - just use spare off-peak power to charge our cars up. New wind-power farms can supply electricity at 0.03/kw/hour - pretty cheap. (British Wind Energy Association page)

Once people get off the treadmill of buying new petrol cars and realise how cheap electric cars can be, volumes go up and the prices will drop..

It all makes sense - doesnt it?

Solar power comes in all forms - solar cells, wind power, etc.. Dont forget "moon" power - tidal (ok a bit of solar in that)!

Wind power is outstripping nuclear, if you look at it on a level playing field. Not only cleaner, but probably cheaper too, especially if you take into account the cost of decommissioning, and storing old nuclear waste for centuries. New offshore wind farms in the uk are contracted to produce electricity at 0.03/kilowatt/hour, and that price is set to drop..
(British wind energy association) (also awea.com)

We will have to stop using oil some time fairly soon anyway - we have to find a way to power vehicles from some sort of alternative. If its 10 or 50 years anyway why not make it sooner and stop pouring out CO2?

Not true. There are alternatives (*cough*wind power*cough*) that are outstripping nuclear, if you look at it on a level playing field. New offshore wind farms in the uk are contracted to produce electricity at 0.03/kilowatt/hour, and that price is set to drop.. (British wind energy association) The real energy problem is a blinkered outlook in some parts of the US establishment..

How about funding an extensive renewable program in North Korea, in return for no nukes? In the UK we will be getting off-shore wind farms generating power for as little as $0.03/kw/hr.. (British Wind Enrgy Association page )

It sound good in theory - yes reprocess and you loose the plutonium. In practice, the UK had to shut down their reprocessor reactor - they had real headaches with certain products, ie liquid waste, which became very expensive to handle safely. And you still get all sorts of high/medium level waste - no process is perfect. And even the short-half life products are *still* problematic, even if they dont last thousands of years. Thanks to reprocessing, the Irish sea is now the most radioactive in the world. .

Alternatives are safer, and now muchmore feasable - British Wind Enrgy Association page..

I would agree with the first part - the big problem is decommissioning & storing waste - which has to be kept out of terrorist hands for thousands of years - apart from future risk, its just plain *expensive*. Oh sure, maybe nuclear electric is $0.04/kw/hr, as long as the government covers that future cost..

Alternatives are already feasable, wind power is contracted to supply offshore UK power for $0.03/kw/hr - and that is set to *drop*. See British Wind Enrgy Association page. The UK, US, Australia, etc all have enough offshore space to generate 100-1000% of all their power needs..

It just needs political will to do it..

I think ther are all sorts of reasons for not giving nuclear a "second chance". Even if you make it relatively "meltdown-safe", you still have huge issues as to what to do with the waste. The plutonium generated by the reactor described has to be stored for thousands of years, guarded against terrorist use. That is a massive hidden future cost, financial & risk-wise. Decommissioning old plants is very costly - again another hidden cost. If you try to get rid of the plutonium by reprocessing, you run into another set of waste-disposal headaches.

Renewables have matured considerably since nuclear power was first envisaged - to the point where they are very competitive. Some of the new offshore wind farms are contracted to supply power to the UK grid for $0.03/kw/hr - and that figure could drop with scale. See the British Wind Enrgy Association page. Other forms like tidal, solar, etc are promising, yet unexploited..

There is no good reason to take the risk with nuclear, we have better alternatives these days..

This is the reason why we have to start now, long before the wells run dry. We are all too addicted/dependant on personal transport now to switch over to public transport totally (myself included), and its gonna take time to replace all those cars.

The point is its all feasable - Ive mentioned the wind power bit (USA) before - costs down to $0.03/kw/hr & falling - just turn it into Hydrogen, or power batteries direct if cheap/light enough. Its actually not gonna be that hard, just requires the will. Increasing taxes on petrol helps, but is not enough in itself. Actually I think costs could come right down as technologies improve (like PC's)- our kids could all be driving powerful SUVs running on cheap green electric/hydrogen, laughing at their dads who fought wars over oil..

So the big question - are we getting close to practical electric cars? Ok the vehicles in this competition are a "tour-de-force" of solar technology, but perhaps one day we could really have cars with advanced light-weight cheap batterys (thanks to advances in laptop/mobile batteries), and solar panels to charge when you leave your car parked in daylight. Also add regenerative braking, a fairly rapid recharge cycle, and for longer journeys give the garages something to sell - they can "hot-swap" batteries for a fully charged one, for a price. Is that the future, or is it Hydrogen fuel cells? Or some combination of both?

Again, I just cannot figure why we still persist with nuclear, oil, coal, with all the attendant problems (pollution, wars over oil, etc), when we could cover a small proportiion of the deserts of the world with solar cells, and the roofs of our buildings, and the coasts with huge offsiore wind farms (British Wind Enrgy Association page) & tidal turbines, and have all the power we need?

.. and wind farms can even help tourism for that area...

If you believe that it makes sense to meet our future power needs with nuclear or fossil, then you are the one who is smoking..

I never suggested that we should have *all* our power needs from solar, just that its one option that makes sense in some places. Amorphous silicon cells are relatively new, are very cheap to make, and if efficiency can be improved would certainly make solar pay in all sorts of situations. Solar roofing is a reality, I already gave a link to a project in Australia, where they had effectively zero electric bills - the roof made as much electricity as the house used, net. (minus heating admittedly) Other uses for incidental solar power, like solar power windows in office buildings, are even now a practical reality.

Normal solar cells, based on crystalline silicon, are much more efficient than they used to be too, although still expensive. But you can use steered mirrors to increase the effectiveness of the cells. Put in just a fraction of the money squandered on Nuclear into development, and you will see results.

Hydrogen is already on the cards, fuel cells development is being pushed as the long term replacement for petrol in the US. And by what other means do you make Hydrogen, if not by electricity from renewables of some sort?? Sure there is some loss when you electrolyse H2O, but what of it? What system doesnt have some % loss? Coal, gas, oil do not just switch in so easily on demand either, large stations take a considerable amount of time to fire up, so often spare capacity is running/wasted with fossil/nuclear too.

Not only are off-shore wind farms feasable, they are already a working, paying, reality in the UK, see here, also in other European countries too. Damn sight cheaper than nuclear too, when you add all the hidden costs in. We should have 20% UK power from wind by 2020, and there is no reason why we cannot have 200%+, the sites are there. Wind power,contrary to expectations is about as stable as other forms of energy on a national scale - its always windy somewhere..

Its largely a myth, but are you seriously suggesting that other forms of power generation have no environmental impact?

Yes, the link I gave you showed you the maths - indeed to generate *all* the power needed just with solar would require large areas of land. That is why I was suggesting that such scheme should operate in conjunction with other alternatives. You dont need to meet "peak" demand in the way you suggest. Dont forget that there is an area in your home that can be used to generate free power - your roof. You can cover the roof of your home with solar tiles, combined with systems that directly heat water for the house etc.

Zero annual electricity bills for these guys - the tiles make as much electricity as they take from the grid. (ok with gas heating). Check also This link, This link , This link or This link

Do you think that nuclear is a better option? Or cheaper? The UK (and many other countries) has squandered truely huge amounts of money on nuclear, now, it appears, with no positive end result - they are going to be left with a collection of reactor sites that are going to be very expensive to decommission and clean up. If they had invested just a fraction of that money on renewables, we would be burning a heck of a lot less coal/oil/gas now. There are actually parts of the world (ie Chernobyl) that are too radioactive to live, thanks to mistakes/miscalculations made by the nuclear power industry..

And the point is - why bother with nuclear, why take the risk? It is becoming very apparent that alternatives really can deliver cheap electricity, without the same level of pollution and waste. Furthermore, costs of solar cells will drop as volumes increase. Case in point - look at the monitor you are (probably) looking at now - if it is TFT - and think how much the price has decreased in the last few years as manufacturing techniques have improved and volumes increased.. Push the production volumes up, and have every house in the country use solar tiling..

The UK is setting a target of getting 20% of its power from re-newables by 2020, and a lot of that will be wind-power. There are soon to be huge offsiore wind farms in construction.. And they are not noisy, nor do they upset wildlife - thats basically a myth - same site documents the evidence. The USA has a similar wealth on uneploited wind sites too..

In the UK we could in fact have 200% power needs just from offshore/onshore wind without too much difficulty. What do you do when you have too much power? Turn it into hydrogen for cars. What do you do when you dont have enough power? Burn some hydrogen.. We already have infrastructure to transport gas.

Proving that solar (and other alterntives) have come on leaps and bounds in the last decade or so. Why do we still persist with nuclear, oil, coal, with all the attendant problems (pollution, wars over oil, etc), when we could cover a small proportiion of the deserts of the world with solar cells, and the roofs of our buildings, and the coasts with huge offsiore wind farms & tidal turbines, and have all the power we need?

It strikes me that national power systems often have dangerous reliance on a small number of big power-providers - large coal/gas/oil/nuclear stations, with electricity imported/transported down a few very large critical power lines. Alternative energy may provide a solution, because by its nature it needs a higher level of redundancy and a more intelligent and distributed power supply model. And its good for the planet too.. Wind energy has really started to prove its use here in the UK, and is set to take off in the USA too. In the UK we should have 20% of national power from the Wind by 2020, and we have the offshore sites to get 100% eventually if we wanted. Add to that Solar, Tidal, etc.. Because of the very nature of these resources local/national distribution must be better, and include mechanisms to regulate in the case of a drop in power..

Oh, and what do you do when you have excess production? Turn the electricity into Hydrogen for your cars!

Rubbish. It depends *how* small you make the generators, of course - maybe joe bloggs with a little solar panel on his roof is not going to get a fantastically efficient system (that does not mean it is not sometimes viable or desirable). Where that sort of system can really pay off is in new build estates - where all the houses have solar built into the roofs feeding a local power-management system, which can feed excess power back to the grid, etc. Such projects are up and running around Europe now, and pay back for themselves in a few years, even comparing to cheap "dig it up and burn" electricity.. France is not yet paying fully to *get rid* of the nuclear waste - its shipping the stuff to the UK to reprocess - except that the UK is closing down the reprocessing plant because it doesnt pay. People are scratching their heads and saying "hang on, what do you *do* with plutonium that is going to be radioactive for centuries, and has to be guarded in case some terrorist digs it up to make a dirty bomb..". You think its cheap? Those "bearded weirdo lefties" (Blair etc) in UK government dont think so, they are winding down nuclear and investing in Wind power... THe UK has wasted countless billions on a disasterously uneconomic nuclear program - the same money in alternatives would have given us economic wind power today.

Sigh. I did say OVER centralised. Alternatives power generation is ALREADY a commercial reality - providing a diverse mixture of large (centralised) and small (local) generation facilitys. It can be small, like a new housing estate with solar built into every roof, feeding a local regulation system. Or a medium sized Windfarm. Or it can be large, like the huge offshore wind farms the UK is building, as it dumps its uneconomical and disasterous nuclear program. By definition a system which includes a lot of power generation from renewable resources MUST be more de-centralised than old fashioned coal/oil/nuclear, because the resources are spread out over larger areas. A power system to collect and distribute it must be better at controlling/regulating the energy to function correctly.