Shetland windfarm - Viking Energy

[Styumpie]

Dates are important too

1 April 2010

 

[MuckleJoannie]

Carlos , if a windfarm within shetland with back ups from fossil fuel - gas or fuel oil / diesel can be niether profitable nor actually save fuel from being burn't .

 

I believe Burradale is extremely profitable for its shareholders. The pont about fuel does stand.

[muckleossa]

Time to lighten the discussion - WINDMILLS keep getting mentioned.

 

http://muckleossa.blogspot.com/2010/04/windy-farm-milly-generatory-thingies.html

[skaterboy]

It seems from this that our carbon footprint up here is nowhere near as high as the council would have us believe.

 

http://www.netimperative.com/news/2010/april/iphone-app-maps-uk-energy-consumption

 

could they have been trying to shame us into accepting the windfarm.

[sjeunson]

It seems from this that our carbon footprint up here is nowhere near as high as the council would have us believe.

 

http://www.netimperative.com/news/2010/april/iphone-app-maps-uk-energy-consumption

 

could they have been trying to shame us into accepting the windfarm.

 

If you check the source you'll see that it comes from DECC, who were also so the source who said that Shetland had the worst carbon footprint. Might just be me but a company trying to sell smart meters has a lot more to gain tweeking the numbers to show the heavily populated areas being worst. Does anybody here believe that Shetland has the 2nd lowest carbon footprint? I certainly don't!

[ArabiaTerra]

^^^^ Those figures do seem awfully low, but I think what they've done is looked only at the energy costs of running a household, heating, lighting etc. There is a lot more to your carbon footprint than that.

 

Car use, flying and all the carbon costs associated with schools, hospitals, leisure centres and, above all, industry, would push the figure up a lot, but these are things that smart meters would have no effect on.

 

(Mind you, the windfarm will have no effect on car use, flying and a lot of industry, it would only help where electricity is used. Building the windfarm won't reduce the islands carbon footprint to zero, but it would significantly reduce it.)

[Ichorus]

Has anyone else noticed that it is mainly the generation that has forced us to invent our way out of this mess called climate change that has the biggest problem with the wind farm?

 

You are swell folks.

 

Apologises will be accepted via comment on here.

[mate64]

Mind you, the windfarm will have no effect on car use

That is not quite correct, AT.

 

Electric cars and other vehicles will become the norm in the near future. A single charge can comfortably put a car the length of Shetland. Power from renewables will then be excellent for the local economy.

Oil will become prohibitively expensive. It is already for some. Imagine, never having to buy petrol again.

So let’s get these windmills up, the cable connected and then onto the wave and tide technologies.

The future could be bright. The present set up is unsustainable.

[keetiebairdie]

Mate64 makes several one line statements,which leads this reader to think M64 means that we are to benefit from VE, via electrical power to charge our electric cars - free maybe.

 

Don't forget that VE have said time and again that we islanders won't benefit from cheaper electricity, it will all gaeng sooth.

 

And by the time the government, the tax man, customs, Queens estate (who own the shores,etc), SSE, Uncle Tom Cobley, the landowners, the partners of VE get their share of 'profits', there will be nothing left in the kitty for us ordinary folks - and all or most of our oil funds will be gone.

 

Has onybody done da sums?

[Skunnered]

^^Hopefully VE will publish the sums at some point, before they actually make the commitment.

[mate64]

power to charge our electric cars - free maybe

 

Electrical power from our wind, tides and waves will, of course, not be free. But keeping local control of these resources as advocated by VE would at least allow it to be affordable to the ordinary punter.

We cannot control the price of oil. In the 1960’s petrol was 4 bob a gallon. Now it is approaching £6 – that’s a factor of 30. If that is repeated over the next 50 years then we are talking £180 per gallon, or £2000 to fill up a peerie cor. Filling your heating oil tank will be more . . . .

It will in fact be much more expensive than this because of demand from the developing world coupled with peak oil. Buying petrol will no longer be an option for da man in da street and we will not have to wait 50 years.

So get real. Get these renewables up and running. Get entrepreneurial. Or somebody else will.

[Carlos]

From an online calculator

In 2008, £0 4s 0d from 1960 is worth

£3.45 using the retail price index.

£7.95 using average earnings.

Fuel is a 3/4 of the cost as a % of your earnings now, than it was in 1960.

Other things are a lot cheaper though, so in comparison fuel costs appear higher.

Of course then you come on to external costs.....

[mate64]

Get entrepreneurial

 

When a public vote is taken on whether to proceed with the windmills perhaps it should be restricted to young people, say under 35 (negotiable), since it is them who will be running the show. Some older Shetland folks seem to lack the drive to move society forward. Most of the initiatives up here are from incomers.

Perhaps Arthur Anderson didn’t do us such a favour. He creamed off the best talent among the youngsters, processed them for 6 years in his AEI then shipped them oot da sooth mooth on his P&O line, the vast majority never to return. Clearly this has a detrimental effect on the gene pool.

It is probably inevitable that this should happen to isolated communities. But we don’t have to be isolated. Orkney and Shetland could be at the centre of one of the most important, exciting, green and profitable industries in the coming decades.

So we have a choice: shall we sell power to the world or buy it from Orkney?

[mate64]

I do sympathise with many of the points raised by Sustainable Shetland but they are being short sighted. The wind turbines are only for starters. There is FAR more energy in the sea. In the longer term only a small percentage of our energy output will be from wind so the turbines can decommissioned.

And anyway, more efficient and less obtrusive systems will be developed to harness wind power.

[unlinkedstudent]

Get entrepreneurial

 

When a public vote is taken on whether to proceed with the windmills perhaps it should be restricted to young people, say under 35 (negotiable), since it is them who will be running the show. Some older Shetland folks seem to lack the drive to move society forward. Most of the initiatives up here are from incomers. ...

 

Oh for the joys of ageism! I'm 46, an incomer and against the windfarm in its proposed format. As a Council Tax payer albeit one who was not resident in Shetland during the "oil boom" (but doesn't money continue to be put into the "pot" now from the oil industry?), are you suggesting I should be deprived of such a vote?

 

I am not against wind energy per se, but totally against the idea that Shetland should contribute such a large sum towards its construction. I'm also against the scale of the windfarm. Economically, it just does not make sense. However, if a smaller windfarm for the benefit of the Shetland Islands alone was proposed to run say alongside a modern power station, then I would be in favour, depending upon its location. I've mentioned previously electric cars - couldn't wind energy provide electricity for a "car grid" to be installed in Shetland?