Jump to content

Shetland windfarm - Viking Energy


trout
 Share

Recommended Posts

This may not be a serious suggestion, just a point to debate.

 

Half a £ billion is a lot of money. That is roughly the cost of the connecter cable. Could some of this not be used instead to develop a hydrogen production plant. The Viking project could then easily power Shetland (even in a calm day) and have tonnes of hydrogen to export. Also the diesel backup would not be necessary.

 

In the longer term when wave and tide become more viable we could connect to the North Sea super-grid. That would be a shorter cable than the route to Scotland.

 

Hydrogen is a good idea and we will most certainly see much more commercial use of it in the future. As AT points out its difficult stuff to transport and store by compression or liquefaction. The amount of energy required in the compression and liquefaction process is approximately 40% of the lower heat value of the hydrogen gas, so using these techniques the overall energy efficiency becomes very low. The third storage method currently in use is absorption into a metal hydride solid. This method provides better overall energy efficiency but the resulting solid material is very heavy using the presently available materials, this of course makes transportation expensive. One way to solve the storage/transportation problem is to ‘burn’ the hydrogen fuel on the same site as you produce it thereby removing the need for transport or storage. This of course requires additional investment in the form of a hydrogen power station and the need for an interconnector cable is still there.

 

You would also need to modify a gas turbine generator set to burn the stuff, both here and at the export destination.

 

I’m fairly sure that if you ask Alstom, or Solar or any other turbine manufacturer they will sell you a gas turbine which will burn hydrogen just fine and the cost need not be prohibitive. Indeed when compared to the overall proposed figures of the VE project I suspect the cost of a turbine will be relatively small. I don’t think that you will see anyone burning hydrogen in gas turbines anytime soon however. Any hydrogen based generation system is much more likely to use fuel cell technology due to the vastly improved efficiencies.

 

Hydrogen is very dangerous, if it goes wrong, bang.

 

Hydrogen is no more or less dangerous than any other flammable gas that is in regular use today, propane, methane, butane, acetylene etc. It has a lower ignition energy than all but acetylene or carbon disulphide and a very wide explosive range, but it has a high ignition temperature so with sensible precautions it does not pose any greater risk. Indeed because it is lighter than air any leak will rise and rapidly disperse, while heavier than air substances such as propane, butane, petrol vapour etc will accumulate in low lying areas and present an explosion risk for an extended period of time making them more dangerous in that respect.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I see the S.I.C. has made page 13 of this months edition of privatwe eye in an article called

 

- BLOWING AWAY

 

It begins with a history of how millions of pounds of community funds were given away to chums of senior councillors to fund salmon farms - " the fishy smell still lingers"

It then gives a description of the viking windfarm plan with various figures and details attached.

It finishes on the scandal of SIC Councillers going against the advice of its own planning officers led by the convener " Sandy Clueless Cluness" and that they have been reported to the standards commision for scotland on the grounds of conflict of interest as they all sit as trustees on the charitable trust.

 

It finishes with the sentence -

 

" The question for shetlanders now is what to do about a "community charitable trust" that the community no longer trusts".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

^^ Yep our illustrious nine were obviously totally unconcerned about the conditions they are creating in Northern China, ( see posting from Grafter above ) For them that don't want to know I would suggest they have a long hard look so that they can remind their generations to come how they helped Shetland to forge ahead !

 

Quote :-

 

 

The reality is that, as Britain flaunts its environmental credentials by speckling its coastlines and unspoiled moors and mountains with thousands of wind turbines, it is contributing to a vast man-made lake of poison in northern China. This is the deadly and sinister side of the massively profitable rare-earths industry that the ‘green’ companies profiting from the demand for wind turbines would prefer you knew nothing about.

 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-Pollution-disastrous-scale.html#ixzz1CphNOg00

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wind power keeps the cost of electricity down:

 

http://www.350resources.org.uk/2010/07/25/all-power-to-the-wind-%E2%80%93-it-cuts-your-electricity-bills/

 

The reality is that, as Britain flaunts its environmental credentials by speckling its coastlines and unspoiled moors and mountains with thousands of wind turbines, it is contributing to a vast man-made lake of poison in northern China. This is the deadly and sinister side of the massively profitable rare-earths industry that the ‘green’ companies profiting from the demand for wind turbines would prefer you knew nothing about.

 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-Pollution-disastrous-scale.html#ixzz1CphNOg00

This is a typically distorted and misleading Daily Hiel story.

 

First of all, these magnets are used in electric motors and generators, not just wind turbines. So everything you own which has an electric motor in it could well have these rare earth metals in it.

 

Second, not all wind turbines use permanent magnets, many of the newer designs use electro-magnets precisely because of the environmental problems with rare-earth metals.

 

And thirdly, as I posted above, due to the way the electricity market works, wind turbines actually help to keep prices down. The daily heil claims in that article that we face a £160 "green tax" on our bills by 2020. They completely fail to mention the increase likely due to increasing costs of coal, oil and natural gas over the next 10 years. They also fail to mention that our nuclear and most of our coal power stations will need replacement anyway during the next 10-20 years which will cost billions.

 

All in all, another spectacular main stream media fail. :roll:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just the obvious point that we will likely be left depending on electricity coming up the cable to meet Shetlands power needs when the wind fails. All well and good until some ship breaks the cable and we then have a very long power cut.

 

Orkney had power cut recently and it took ages for them to remember how to fire up the power station

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • admin changed the title to Shetland windfarm - Viking Energy

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...