UK Wants Huge Expansion In Offshore Wind Power

OriginalArlen writes "The UK government has announced an ambitious plan to expand the existing offshore wind turbine farms, which are already extensive, to an estimated 7,000 units — two per mile of coastline — enough to generate 20% of the UK's power needs by 2020. The newly green-friendly Conservative opposition party is also backing the scheme. Wonder what they'll make of it in Oregon..."

Comments

Tidal is different from wind

[explosivejared]

Wonder what they'll make of it in Oregon..."

The situation in Oregon called for the implementation of buoy-like devices to harness wave motion into power. Great Britain is talking about placing windmills offshore. The power generation and science in general is different. The politics of it may be the same though. I'm not qualified to speak about Brit NIMBY's (or I guess NOMSL-not on my shore line), Brit fisherman, or Brit energy lobbyists, as I am an American. I imagine there would be some resistance here, but I not familiar with the situation. On the other hand, wind is a proven tech so who knows. It really just comes down to how powerful the lobbying against this is, as it looks technically feasible and sufficiently beneficial.

Story update

[OriginalArlen]

Since I submitted the story on Sunday, they've actually made the announcement (on Sunday, it was just being heavily trailed in the press.)

Actually, no.

[Chas]

The whole "kills lots of birds" things came about because of some very early, very dense wind farms that weren't planned out very well and had smaller, very high-speed blade systems.

Newer wind turbine systems are larger, slower, better-designed, and more care is usually given to layout of a wind farm so that, while SOME birds are occasionally killed, the numbers are greatly reduced.

Do some Google searches for "altamont pass" and "wind turbines kill birds".