Energy saving

My math(s) may be wrong here, but sharing 450mw across 360,000 households equates to 1250 watts a piece, now that's less than a single kettle per house.

That's some serious energy saving we'll have to be doing by 2013

CF lightbulbs

Whoopie doo, now can I continue to use tungsten light bulbs please?

...and when the 'wind don't blow'

Am I missing something, 24x7x52x30 nuclear power stations are coming to the end of their life, and were investing in windy millers 1900 technology.

Neither is a windmills generating guaranteed (for all intents and purposes) for 30 years, or 52 weeks, or 7 days or even 24 hours. You cant even guarantee that in the next hour power will be flowing.

At least the juice wont be reliable enough for the governments fantastic, alice in wonderland, databases.

Windfarsm are a gross waste of money

I hear it costs a lot more to build and maintain a standard propeller-like wind turbine, for its limited lifespan, than the revenue generated by the turbine (given the narrow range of compatible wind speeds), so this looks like a gross waste of tax payers money. I doubt even much higher oil prices will even out the difference, because then Nuclear power becomes more economical.

... however ...

There are alternative turbine designs available, some of which can cope with a much wider range of speed winds, from any direction, without having to be braked, for high winds, these could be better for the variable wind conditions in the UK.

A key problem with electricity generating turbines, of all designs, is you can't just dump the raw electricity on the national grid, you have to synchronize the frequency, phase and voltage output, of the many wind turbines, to the national grid; crude power conversion solutions could waste massive amounts of power. A proper solution would probably need several power conversion stages, to inject power onto the grid, with minimal waste.

It may even be a better idea to have all the wind turbines drive gas, fluid or heat pumps, or even electrolysis cells, then drive a one or more regulated turbines off the stored energy, for the whole site, it could be a lot more efficient and reliable than electrical power converters in the turbines.

Tea

It is important that we have all the kettles on constantly.

20 percent

The electricity system in this country can cope with 20% of it's generation from wind. After that we need to think about storage, smart electricity systems etc. Currently we are at less than 1%.

Closing the mouth of Morecambe Bay

Yet another nail in the coffin for the wildlife of Morecambe Bay. With the existing Barrow Windfarm, this Walney one, the Shell Flats site recently approved off Cleveleys, the pending Ormonde and West Duddon wind farm projects, and the exisitng gas rigs, there will effectively be a fence across the mouth of Morecambe Bay creating a serious barrier for migrating seabirds. Morecambe Bay is an internationally recognised RAMSAR site for wildlife, yet the goverment appears to be prepared to allow it to be seriously degraded by allowing these developments.