Electric cars - impressive.

[ScotRoutes]

I wondered why they dont just use wind to pump water to an upland lake and then use it for on demand hydro - a very simple and environmentally friendly battery .

They basically do. Low cost (off-peak) electricity is used to fill up a reservoir on Ben Cruachan which empties into Loch Awe. There's a similar scheme in Wales and one underway by Loch Ness. At the moment there's no guarantee that the power they use is from wind but as Scotland already produces an abundance of green electricity there is a very high probability.

And some folk have more green energy than they know what to do with.

https://youtu.be/8UmsfXWzvEA

[Hamish]

They are also experimenting with dangling big weights down mine shafts… excess power winds them up to the surface with a motor and when the demand is right they generate electricity by letting the weights fall and drive a generator. Like a grandfather clock.

Advantages include v quick response, none of the ecological impact of hydro and increased efficiency as pumping a liquid had big losses.

The problem is scaling it… but it is thought to be viable. Interesting that they may use coal mine shafts…

[Hamish]

Anyway, I had better go and prepare my winter biomass rather than theorise on renewables because that is my bank-holiday-hide-from-the+crowds-even-though it’s-nice-weather job.

[Bearbonesnorm]

Anyway, I had better go and prepare my winter biomass rather than theorise on renewables because that is my bank-holiday-hide-from-the+crowds-even-though it’s-nice-weather job.

Ooh that's my job today too ... doesn't seem right burning petrochemicals to cut it

[ledburner]

=edit) this part got deleted, damn touch screens.
With led lamps uptake, we cut our energy usage 10 yes ago. , an eco kettle improved our drive to reduce usage/save on bills. now we have every thing on standby, more devices, service by online storage in nags dta centres, consuming vast amounts of power,
we used to store goods locally and most item were off the shelf, service by a few big truck delivering once or twipe a week. now smaller lorries deliver daily or do home deliveries in a longer run from farther away.

Until silicon Valley get a grip on usage and pointless constant 'improvement development' and American style greed for instant conscience-less consumption. . we will be in a constant cycle of trying to keep up with increasing demand, using rarer resource of energy & material.

let all get off-line, contribute to/make a fanzine, posted out bi-annually and all sleep in a ditch!

[Hamish]

Anyway, I had better go and prepare my winter biomass rather than theorise on renewables because that is my bank-holiday-hide-from-the+crowds-even-though it’s-nice-weather job.

Ooh that's my job today too ... doesn't seem right burning petrochemicals to cut it

I was thinking the same as I bought petrol for the saw. Still you get quite a lot of heat from a few liters of hydrocarbon.

[lune ranger]

Anyway, I had better go and prepare my winter biomass rather than theorise on renewables because that is my bank-holiday-hide-from-the+crowds-even-though it’s-nice-weather job.

Ooh that's my job today too ... doesn't seem right burning petrochemicals to cut it

I was thinking the same as I bought petrol for the saw. Still you get quite a lot of heat from a few liters of hydrocarbon.

I’ve an vaguely exciting 56v battery powered 45cm chainsaw… but the majority of the work is done with a hydraulic splitter sat on the back of my old MF 135 tractor. Just don’t tell anyone that.

[Lazarus]

[lune ranger]

[ledburner]

we've gone from floods, to chainsaw massacres, via electricution.

your a warped lot, I blame[plane] those video nasties..

[fatbikephil]

Oof this has gone all over the place.
Once more with feeling THRERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GREEN ENERGY!
I'm truly amazed that anyone thinks this is the case. I was passing by some wind farm sites last month and they are a total environmental disaster. I'm fed up of hearing people say that wind energy is 'free' and has no carbon impact. Uranium is free and it has no carbon impact when used to produce heat. Extracting, refining and processing? Ahh. Likewise Uranium I mean wind.

Thats the problem with EV's as Hamish says - they make people thing they are saving the planet when in fact, they make little or no difference. They sort of solve the city air quality issue but, us in Scotland, Northern England, Wales and N Ireland are fed up of all the windfarms to power all those cars in the South east

Nope its impossible, we need to massively reduce energy use and thats not going to be easy.

Still, we can all be smug sanctimonious gits as we all ride bikes

[PaulB2]

I’ve been curious for a while to know if extensive wind farms have a noticeable affect on local weather patterns and ecology. All that energy going in to the turbines is no longer in the weather system, just not sure if it’s a big enough effect to be noticeable.

[fatbikephil]

I’ve been curious for a while to know if extensive wind farms have a noticeable affect on local weather patterns and ecology. All that energy going in to the turbines is no longer in the weather system, just not sure if it’s a big enough effect to be noticeable.

Nature Scotland and RSPB have been doing a lot of research into the effects on birds. I'm a bit out of touch these days but the last I read was that they definitely affect migration patterns and nesting sites but not conclusive on whether there has been an overall negative effect.

RSPB have also looked at bird strikes but I recall that the numbers involved were considered to be fairly low.

[Rob S]

I don't know who researched it, but there was a thread on UKC (ukclimbing) a few years ago. The conclusion was that not many birds were harmed by wind turbines, but it was mostly birds of prey for some reason.

I don't mind a wind turbine but there's always a hidden cost. The company I work for installed nine of the big ones, 2.5MW each. I couldn't believe how much concrete went into the foundations, 80 lorry loads into each base. Then you have to put in all the infrastructure and concrete takes a huge amount of energy to produce. Obviously some sites will need less depending on ground conditions. If it wasn't for grants and the more favourable export tariffs for green power, most sites wouldn't be feasible.

It's a similar situation with waste wood, until the landfill tax skyrocketed it wasn't worth processing it. But now as long as your price per tonne is less than landfill cost you'll get it. But we use a massive amount of energy to chip it and then remove all the metals etc. All this for a relatively small amount of potential power, because wood isn't energy dense.

[Rob S]

Pumped hydroelectric schemes have their place, and that is to cope with sudden load on the grid. They always use more power than they produce, but they use it off-peak when there is a surplus. It takes hours to wind up a superheated steam plant and turbine to cope with more demand.

[Hamish]

.

I don't mind a wind turbine but there's always a hidden cost. The company I work for installed nine of the big ones, 2.5MW each. I couldn't believe how much concrete went into the foundations, 80 lorry loads into each base. Then you have to put in all the infrastructure and concrete takes a huge amount of energy to produce. Obviously some sites will need less depending on ground conditions. If it wasn't for grants and the more favourable export tariffs for green power, most sites wouldn't be feasible.

It's a similar situation with waste wood, until the landfill tax skyrocketed it wasn't worth processing it. But now as long as your price per tonne is less than landfill cost you'll get it. But we use a massive amount of energy to chip it and then remove all the metals etc. All this for a relatively small amount of potential power, because wood isn't energy dense.

I’m no expert on this but I recon that wind power will nearly always emit less carbon than fossil fuel generation. I think most modern wind turbines are at well below 100 CO2eq/kWh (nearer 50 I think) whereas coal is up at 1000 and gas around 400.

Despite the carbon cost of construction, grid reinforcement and decommissioning, I understand that most wind turbines will currently pay their carbon debt off in about a year or less. That payback time depends on where they are constructed (best not on deep peat for example!) and also on the carbon intensity of the electricity they displace. As the overall generation mix becomes less carbon intensive, the payback time will increase and so the fight to find the most carbon efficient means of generation will intensify.

I see wind farms as a bit of a necessary evil really. I guess we need them and a few on the landscape doesn’t bother me; not that my opinion makes any difference to whether we get them or not. But having so many that you can never ever get away from them would be unpleasant. In bikepacking terms, riding from say Brianne to the Dovey, Nant Rhys is a bit of a novelty. But if it was like Nant Rhys all the way… hmmmm.

Mind you I don’t want to experience run away global warming either.