Shetland windfarm - Viking Energy

[crofter]

That looks like a massive volume of water - is there enough rain in a year to fill it?

[sjeunson]

Ummmm..... not quite.

 

Pumped Storage Hydro scheme is what that is. Pump water in when there's an abundance of power then let it flow out when there's not i.e. no wind.

 

It's handy because the interconnector goes through there to so the input/output pipe could go in the same trench. See i've got it all figured out.

[crofter]

Seawater?

[sjeunson]

Aye, it's all going to end up under seawater anyway if we do nothing so why not?

[crofter]

If you use seawater, surely the reservoir could be a lot smaller?

[sjeunson]

If you use seawater, surely the reservoir could be a lot smaller?

 

Sorry, didn't do any sizing for turbines big enough to cover a decent MW so I don't know the flow rates required therefore the volume for a set period of time.

[Malachy]

The thing that alot of people choose to ignore it seems to me is that nothing in the renewable sector will cure global warming on it's own. There needs to be massive changes to the way we use/produce/store energy.

 

Yes, quite. The technology currently does not exist for renewables to be of much use at all large-scale. In fact, the only technology that currently exists that is capable of producing the amount of energy that people want without contributing to global warming is nuclear fission. And if that is the option that is chosen then all the other renewables are pretty pointless anyway because we wouldn't need them. ...

If we back up our wind power with fossil fuel energy then we're not doing enough to cut carbon emissions. But if we back up our renewables with nuclear then, well, why bother. Nuclear can produce all the energy needed without covering the landscape in windmills.

There are obviously risks with nuclear, but they seem to be less than most folk imagine, and it's probably now safe to argue that the risks of using nuclear are smaller than the risks of not using it.

[Malachy]

Our lifestyles are unsustainable because they are based on fossil fuel energy.

 

Well, that's an over simplification. It is estimated (these things can only ever be estimates) that the impact of our carbon emissions over the last 100 years are almost certainly less of a problem for the planet than the impact of our habitat destruction. The earth (Gaia, if you wish) is capable of regulating itself, even with major changes in the atmosphere. But once you remove living things that help do that regulating job then it doesn't function anymore. (I'm thinking here of the forests that once covered vast areas of the planet, and peat bogs, that kind of thing).

That is why so many people who consider themselves environmentalists are so horrified by VE - by digging up a peat hill, by imagining that human technology is better at regulating the climate than the planet itself, we are guilty of the most dispicable and unforgivable hubris. We cannot simply continue building over the planet, replacing natural regulation with technological regulation, because we will fail.

[ArabiaTerra]

.... We cannot simply continue building over the planet, replacing natural regulation with technological regulation, because we will fail.

And we cannot stop, else we will fall.

 

The population peaks around 2050. We have to make the changes necessary to get the maximum number of human beings through that bottleneck out of those alive when the bottleneck arrives. Anything less is unethical.

 

We still have time to influence the size of the population when the crunch comes, but the environmental crisis is much more worrying. It gets priority

 

I'm even more pessimistic than you are Malachy. I say we have already failed. Nature cannot now recover without active human help. We already reserve so much of the Earth's surface for human use alone the the surviving wild places cannot save us. It's damage limitation now.

 

And to lessen the damage we have to stop doing the damage. Which means changing the way we do things. We cannot turn off the coal and gas stations until their replacement is already in place. We need to be building that replacement now

 

If the light go out, civilisation falls. If we continue running the generators, the climate fails and the 3rd world, the poor, get it. Therefore we need to change our generators, now.

 

We have to use the technology we have now, to stop the damage because, if we don't, billions could die and they'll take nature with them. How long do you think the rainforests will last if the people living around them are starving? And how do we feed them if our society is breaking too? How can we ever hope to build something truly sustainable, if we don't get through this crisis with our society intact. We can't just "stop doing stuff" and hope it all gets better, we have to fix things. We have to get the surplus carbon back out of the atmosphere as quickly as possible and to do that we need a functioning industrial society.

 

That's the bottom line.

 

The consequences of this little experiment we're conducting with our atmosphere will be with our descendants for up one thousand years according to some studies I've read. We can still change that.

 

*** Apologies to the mods if I've strayed off-topic, this might have been better in the Global Warming thread ***

[Carlos]

Hydro power is the best we have at the moment though and I don't think building more dams would go down well in the highlands.

 

Is there anywhere in Shetland where it would be feasible to build a dam to pump water up to when there was excess electricity? What about public opinion towards more dams in Norway?

Njuggleswater is probably the easiest loch to adapt.

Quick measure from Google Earth looks like you could get 500,000m3 fairly easy with a 50m head down to the Tingwall valley if you dammed the north end of it. But that's just, what.... maybe 2.5MW for 24 hours with good efficiency from the turbines, vs Shetland peak demand of 49MW.

 

Steer me right if my 15 minutes on Google has got wrong answers though

[paulb]

So drowning half of the north of shetland is better than wind turbines?

growing willow or other fast growing plants as the fuel for the backup fuel would work. Tying that in with waste burning (dried poo burns well) I assume animal waste would to.

The electric cars would be a good use of the excess power production, Mini turbines powering free recharging points.

There still nothing wrong with using the power to run a separate heat supply to homes. Even just in Lerwick this would save tons of carbon fuel.

 

Micro turbines on some of the Lochs would produce a few hundred houses Worth of power without drowning the landscape. Even recycling peat that is dug up could be put to good use.

[ArabiaTerra]

The thing that alot of people choose to ignore it seems to me is that nothing in the renewable sector will cure global warming on it's own. There needs to be massive changes to the way we use/produce/store energy.

 

Yes, quite. The technology currently does not exist for renewables to be of much use at all large-scale.

Errr, yes it does. Those links I posted from New Scientist lay out a plan to provide power to all of Europe without using nuclear.

In fact, the only technology that currently exists that is capable of producing the amount of energy that people want without contributing to global warming is nuclear fission. And if that is the option that is chosen then all the other renewables are pretty pointless anyway because we wouldn't need them. ...

If we back up our wind power with fossil fuel energy then we're not doing enough to cut carbon emissions. But if we back up our renewables with nuclear then, well, why bother. Nuclear can produce all the energy needed without covering the landscape in windmills.

There are obviously risks with nuclear, but they seem to be less than most folk imagine, and it's probably now safe to argue that the risks of using nuclear are smaller than the risks of not using it.

Nuclear has it's own problems. Proliferation, limited supplies of uranium and of course, waste. None of these are insurmountable but they certainly reduce it's attractiveness. I support nuclear as it's doing something rather than nothing, but I think we would be better off with renewables.

[ArabiaTerra]

Our lifestyles are unsustainable because they are based on fossil fuel energy.

 

Well, that's an over simplification. It is estimated (these things can only ever be estimates) that the impact of our carbon emissions over the last 100 years are almost certainly less of a problem for the planet than the impact of our habitat destruction. The earth (Gaia, if you wish) is capable of regulating itself, even with major changes in the atmosphere. But once you remove living things that help do that regulating job then it doesn't function anymore. (I'm thinking here of the forests that once covered vast areas of the planet, and peat bogs, that kind of thing).

Yes, so? You're talking about the situation as it stands. It is done. Gaia is no longer capable of repairing or reversing the damage. We know this. The question is, what do we do about it?

That is why so many people who consider themselves environmentalists are so horrified by VE - by digging up a peat hill, by imagining that human technology is better at regulating the climate than the planet itself, we are guilty of the most dispicable and unforgivable hubris. We cannot simply continue building over the planet, replacing natural regulation with technological regulation, because we will fail.

The only way for the planet to recover itself is with the complete removal of the human race. That's not going to happen. We can't restore the lost habitat because people are living there and they have as much right to life, liberty and happiness as you and I. So what do we do instead? VE will only effect a tiny portion of Shetlands peat deposits, the damage done in terms of CO2 released will be tiny even compared to the CO2 cost of an equivalent nuclear station, yet it will provide the power for Shetland, Orkney, the Western Isles and a large chunk of the Highlands.

 

It is the least damaging solution! It is better than solar, wave, tidal and nuclear. And it is way, way better than doing nothing.

 

You can bang on about how bad things are, how we should have done things differently, I understand that and I sympathise, but you're wasting your breath, the damage is done. We now need solid engineering solutions, not recriminations about how we've screwed up, to fix the problem.

 

(And you still haven't come up with your solution. Given what we face, if you don't agree with my solution, how would you fix it? What would you do?)

[PJ of Hildisvik]

If there were a Billion more barrels of oil guaranteed to flow through Sullom Voe for many years to come, SIC would'nt even consider building a wind farm.

It's not about global warming, it's all about panicking to keep Shetland in it's affluent lifestyle before the idiots in charge blow all of the oil reserves.

When will people grasp what really is going on

[ArabiaTerra]

So what's your solution, PJ? Close the leisure centres, scrap the ferries, close the care homes, the local schools, watch the fishing industry die from ocean acidification, the fish farming as well, slash employment in the Council, watch all the engineering firms close with the demise of the oil and fishing industries?

 

So what's left in your perfect Shetland, PJ? A landscape littered with ruins where people used to live and work, one ferry, like the old Earl, per week for the outer isles, a population of (maybe) 10,000 scraping a living from the land?

 

But hey ho, at least you won't have to look at any windmills.