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I live in east Somerset and have just been out to see our first windfarm, on the Mendips. It’s a single wind turbine, but a BIG one and it’s most impressive. It’s run by Ecotricity and appears to be an Enercon E80, which has a maximum output of 2 Megawatts.
It was quite windy and the blades were turning briskly. There was no noticeable noise from this giant machine, which surprised me. This type does not have a gearbox, which is a source of noise on some other types of big turbine.
Theoretically 30,000 (yikes)! such turbines would be capable of meeting ALL our current electricity needs, if sufficient wind is blowing. Nobody’s suggesting we should have that many giant turbines, but a lot more are going to be built offshore, with phase 2 sites being further out to sea.
Another turbine manufacturer, Vestas, now do a 3 MW turbine, which is about the same size as the 2 MW one.
I have a very angry friend in north wales who is not happy that a whole fleet are gonna be built at the end of his land, but there is nothing he can do about it.
Ive seen the ones in Norfolk and was pretty impressed, but I dont have to live with it, so Im unsure how I would feel if I was presented with them on a daily basis. TBH… I really dont think I would be that fussed.
Living in the area of acres of green and farmers fields where I grew up and seeing it grow into concrete jungles and my childhood memories of riding wild horses and feeding cows etc all but disappearing under them, Im pretty numb to progress now, and I tend to expect it.
Same with the Stansted expansion. The ones who moan who live there ALL use flights regularly, its so hypocritical.
I agree these big turbines need to be sited sensitively, I wouldn’t want to live right next to one. But one of these turbines does the job that a whole group of the smaller ones does.
I used to live near Stansted Airport when they were first talking about expanding it in the late 60’s. I think air travel will peak and then go into decline as fuel gets more and more expensive and eventually becomes scarce.
One thing about windfarms is that their decommissioning costs are tiny compared to those of a nuclear power station. If a turbine is no longer needed, it can just be removed, the top of the foundation levelled off and returned to nature. OK, I know it needs 500 big turbines to produce the same output as a typical nuclear station!
Well thinking about it that way Id rather live next door to a giant windmill than a nuclear power plant!
Complete waste of time and money. They cant replace power stations because the power is to irregular so the power stations still have to produce the same power with or without wind turbines. The way to go is green nrg on individual homes, maybe a turbine on your roof or solar power. its never going to happen on a large scale.
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