Shetland windfarm - Viking Energy

[ArabiaTerra]

I'm going to have my own shot at it anyway

Go for it, and good luck. If I had a suitable house in the country and the money I would do it myself. Unfortunately, as a general Shetland wide scheme, I don't think it would work, at least not financially.

[Styumpie]

20,000 per house, say av house uses around £2500 currently a year thats only eight years then you have progressively cheaper per year averages, this is very much a long term investment, that will pay off nicely, considering electric will continue to get more expensive during the next decade

 

I have priced my own system at under £10,000, thats not including the 30% grant, so we'll see how it pans out

[ArabiaTerra]

But what about all the businesses and public buildings, they need power too. That's going to add a good 50% to you overall power requirements and hence to the cost. That £20,000 figure was just for houses and a shop.

 

BTW I think we should all be writing to our councillors to get them to pressure VE to offer us cut price power in return for hosting their windfarm, it would make very little difference to their margins and a big difference up here. Payback for all these years of expensive fuel despite the big treacle factory on our doorstep.

[Caeser]

Did the new Foula power scheme not cost £1,000,000? A mix of hydro, solar, wind and diesel back up.

 

Twenty houses or so - 50k each?

[Styumpie]

for 20K you could have one serious setup with weeks if not months of backup capacity, vastly more than youd ever need, but 50K?? with the economy of scale it should get cheaper!, NiFe is the way for me, back up generators should not be needed unless the supply is critical. But saying that you can get a 4Kva generator for around £1500, that combined with the battery bank should do for most houses. It can be done on a small scale easy for a good price.

[Carlos]

I think you are underestimating the cost of tidal power. An offshore installation, mostly if not all underwater is going to cost way more than the equivalent wind capacity and when it breaks (as mechanical devices always do) you have to lift the whole thing out of the water to fix it. It's true that it is more dependable, but it will also be much more expensive both to build and run.

Tidal is another one that could be fairly easy and cheap (in the long term) if you do not mind the disruption - put tidal barrages on some voes, then you have all the mechanics in the dry and easily accessible and all you really need is a lot of rock.

 

Again it's another option that has price / impact pay-offs, the less you want of one, the more you get of the other.

[Carlos]

for 20K you could have one serious setup with weeks if not months of backup capacity, vastly more than youd ever need, but 50K?? with the economy of scale it should get cheaper!

I'm still not sure what kind of setup would be needed?

For a wind / battery "one installation per house" option, are we in the ballpark of a turbine like the one at the Sandwick Social club, and a garage sized store for the batteries and switchgear?

Even with economies of scale that sounds more like 50k than 20k?

[ArabiaTerra]

Tidal is another one that could be fairly easy and cheap (in the long term) if you do not mind the disruption - put tidal barrages on some voes, then you have all the mechanics in the dry and easily accessible and all you really need is a lot of rock.

 

Again it's another option that has price / impact pay-offs, the less you want of one, the more you get of the other.

The Burradale turbines produce 18% of our power at max output. Call it 20% to make the sums easier. So each turbine produces 4%. You would need 25 of this size of turbine to get all your power. Call it 30 for maintenance/downtime, at 5 per installation you would need to block 6 voes.

 

Let's see, Wiesdale Voe, Whiteness Voe, Ronas Voe, Dales Voe, Gloup, Basta Voe? Anyway, each installation would also need a lock for boat access (loads of concrete) or a new marina outside the barrage (and we know how much they cost) and a shed-load of rock, which means quarries. Sustainable Shetland are gonna love this! Oh, Yeah, then there's all the salmon farms you would have to relocate.... that's a lot of disruption.

 

Here's an idea. Moor a string of barges between Toft and Ulsta. Hang the turbines underneath the barges on hinged mounts so you can easily lift them when they break and run a flexible road along the tops of the barges (sort of army pontoon bridge sort of thing) and then you get easily maintained turbines and a bridge to boot. Hows that?

[crofter]

As far as I am aware this is incorrect. The cable is for VE use only.

That's news to me. Does anyone have any references to back this up?

 

Ask Tavish.

 

http://www.tavishscott.com/pages/press_releases.htm

 

(01 Oct meeting with Scottish & Southern Energy)

 

 

Tavish Scott will also raise the issue of the interconnector cable to the Scottish Mainland which is needed before Shetland’s massive wind, wave and tidal renewable energy potential can be unlocked. Tavish Scott said, “I will want to discuss the matter of the capacity of the interconnector cable. It makes no sense to put in cable which hasn’t the capacity to cope when more renewable energy projects, particularly wave and tidal power projects, come of stream.

[crofter]

 

There was an island in the Western Isles (I can't remember which) that installed a renewable system...

 

Eigg.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/highlands_and_islands/7219658.stm

[crofter]

As my (admittedly, very rough) calculations above show, the installation costs would be in the region of £50,000,000. And that money would then be gone, forever,

 

Not necessarily. Let's say the CT makes 50 million available to lend to people who want to install a windmill/battery system. Money to be paid back over 10 years + interest. Not everybody will be able to do this, but for anyone who can it ought to be a good investment. The money which is currently being spent on hydro bills (plus likely some of your wages) is paid back to the trust so that in ten years time the 50million (+ interest) is repaid and anybody who borrowed money has got their own electricity supply - without a hydro bill, but no doubt some maintainance costs!

[sheepshagger]

I see the new windmill at the old deca station lasted a week afore being laid in bits.

[sheepshagger]

AT wrote

 

I think you are underestimating the cost of tidal power. An offshore installation, mostly if not all underwater is going to cost way more than the equivalent wind capacity and when it breaks (as mechanical devices always do) you have to lift the whole thing out of the water to fix it. It's true that it is more dependable, but it will also be much more expensive both to build and run.

 

and i think your not an engineer or even have much of an understanding of engineering principle, how often do traditional hydro power stations go tits up, the same means of generation will be used in tidal schemes and the technology is tried and tested.

and think how often windmills break because of "unusually high winds"

stop spouting turd AT as you havent got a clue

[sheepshagger]

The VE site is still down and I can't find any numbers on the SHETL site.

 

They can't provide a reliable web site and you want to trust them with hundreds of millions of pounds of our money.

[ArabiaTerra]

AT wrote

 

I think you are underestimating the cost of tidal power. An offshore installation, mostly if not all underwater is going to cost way more than the equivalent wind capacity and when it breaks (as mechanical devices always do) you have to lift the whole thing out of the water to fix it. It's true that it is more dependable, but it will also be much more expensive both to build and run.

 

and i think your not an engineer or even have much of an understanding of engineering principle, how often do traditional hydro power stations go tits up, the same means of generation will be used in tidal schemes and the technology is tried and tested.

and think how often windmills break because of "unusually high winds"

stop spouting poop AT as you havent got a clue

Actually, I wasn't referring to "tidal barrage" type schemes which, as you say, are like traditional hydro installations. I was referring to the type of installation which has just been deployed in Strandford Loch which is more like a wind turbine with shorter blades which is anchored to the seabed. That's the type of thing which will be deployed in the strong tidal streams around Shetland such as Yell sound and Bluemell Sound where a tidal barrage is impractical.