Slashdot Mirror

I only want vegan electricity!

https://www.ecotricity.co.uk/o...

you might find this interesting "Ecotricity unveils plan for Britain to make its own gas – from grass" https://www.ecotricity.co.uk/n...

I've not seen anything about house sized non-battery solutions yet unfortunately but there could be community sized ones. For some reason a lot of innovators seem to want to produce the "big bang" units first. There are developments in to tidal pumping of sea water e.g. https://www.ecotricity.co.uk/n.... Your arguments make sense if you are only relying on one source of power generation and storage. As all of these new ways are still relatively young in development, there is plenty of scope for improvement. Not many ideas translate into instant success.

and here is a variation on that principle.. http://www.ecotricity.co.uk/ne...

This article tells us that the tip this turbine rises 106 meters above sea level, so most of it would be visible... but the base itself would still probably be below the horizon I should think. Note that the article includes a photo and a YouTube video.

While wind turbines are clearly not natural, they are clearly a heck of a lot easier on the eyes than the nearby industrial complex that includes the ill-fated reactor.

Note that this is only the first turbine:

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. will install two more turbines, among the largest in the world with a diameter of 167 meters each, within two years. The three turbines, when completed, are expected to cover the power demand of more than 10,000 households

10,000 households is not that much, so I think these turbines are roughly equivilant to the Ecotricity turbines in Swaffham, Norfolk. This first turbine is rated at 2MW, the first turbine at Swaffham was 1.5MW and the second was 1.8MW.( Though I would suspect that offshore winds would be more reliable..)

This.

In 2004 I visited the Ecotricity site in Swaffham, Norfolk, UK at that time this windmill had been in operation for five years.

Part of the morning ritual for this facility is to have staff inspect the ground surrounding the facility for any abnormality including bird strikes. In five years of operations they have never detected a single bird strike nor found any dead birds near the windmill. Even my house had had more bird strikes than that.

The solution is just a few miles from here:

http://www.ecotricity.co.uk/projects/Ford/plan_ford.html

London's biggest wind farm is built ON the auto plant where Ford smelting the aluminium for all their European diesel engines.

Who cares about transmission losses when the power is generated exactly where it's needed? The exact opposite of what TFA suggests is true in this case, the load on the UK national grid is reduced because Ford don't need to bring in the power that these turbines provide.

"The World Wide Fund for Nature Conservation (WWF) has also published a policy statement on renewable energy in the UK, which outlines that there is no evidence that wind turbines have a measurable effect on bird mortality. The statement concludes that: "It has been shown that strikes are highly unlikely to occur during good visibility conditions and in poor visibility birds are less likely to be in the vicinity of turbines. Further it has been found that most birds tend to fly over or around the turbines"."
http://www.ecotricity.co.uk/code/popup_faq_3.html

Comparison of fatal bird injuries from collisions with towers and windows Issn: 0273-8570 Journal: Journal of Field Ornithology Volume: 76 Issue: 2 Pages: 127-133 Authors: Veltri, Carl J., Klem, Daniel Birds do fly into things...
http://www.bioone.org/bioone/?request=get-document &issn=0273-8570&volume=076&issue=02&page=0127

I don't think we are going to devastate the biome with windmills. It is worth looking at what actually happens, and I think the basic science continues, but it is also worth considering what the effect of coal and oil have been on birds - not good I think.