Renewables

[peter macdonald]

At the same time as our Government in Westminster harp on about how they want to make our energy supply as Green as possible and how they want to encourage growth in the remote areas this wee news item pops up

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/highlands_and_islands/6992837.stm

Sad
PM

[Rheghead]

Northern renewables are producing the most lecky, so aren't they in the best financial position to justify the higher connection costs?:confused

[the second coming]

long distances away from population centres
=
increased operations and maintenance costs per km
+
reactive power control requirements caused by induced load over said distances (power factor control)
+
transmission losses (heat)
=
high transmission costs

A fair price to pay for keeping the populus somewhere else imho. :lol:

[ywindythesecond]

At the same time as our Government in Westminster harp on about how they want to make our energy supply as Green as possible and how they want to encourage growth in the remote areas this wee news item pops up

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/highlands_and_islands/6992837.stm (http://forum.caithness.org/go.php?url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/highlands_and_islands/6992837.stm)

Sad
PM

I was struck by Elaine Hanson's gripe :

"She said: "The potential to produce marine and wind energy in coastal areas, offshore and on islands is absolutely vast. "These places have some of the strongest waves, tides and winds to be found anywhere in Europe, a fact which ought to be giving Scotland and the UK a natural advantage over our competitors."

Where is the advantage to Scotland (UK) to come from? Scotland doesn't own the wind waves or tide. It can't charge for their use.

Unlike North Sea Oil which was legally owned by the UK and people paid UK to exploit it, we pay others to exploit our wind wave and tidal energy, and most of the developers are foreign so the subsidy money paid through our electricity bills mostly goes abroad, (as well as the landowners who are the only real Scottish beneficiaries).

Until wind wave and tide are nationalised or licensed, Scotland has no marketable resource to benefit the nation, so Elaine Hanson, what use is the "natural advantage"?

ywindythesecond