Suff wrote:The Wind turbines are not 33% efficient, they are 100% efficient to the stated power capacity, when the wind blows to that level. Which only happens, at best, 33% of the time.
Semantics, Suff. Everyone knows what I mean, and if we go with your figure of them running at installed capacity for only ~20-25% of the time (20-25% efficient) then Abbott's envelope figures look even worse, not that it matters much. They are still only envelope calculations at the end of the day.
Suff wrote:OK lets look at the reality.
Swansea
1.3bn 0.53TWh per year
Hinckley Point C
Assuming 24 hour operation 80% of the year.
18bn, 42TWh per year
Or, in other words, to create the same power generation capacity as Hinckley Point C, using Swansea tidal lagoon technology, would cost £29bn. As we use, currently, 301TWh per year for our current power needs, that's around 200 billion to replace the current grid power.
The first thing to be said is that nobody with a working brain cell is claiming that lagoons are going to supply all our electricity, so the 200 billion figure does not exist. A similar claim was made for windmills by a few muesli munching, tree hugging dreamers. Unfortunately some politicians fell for it, or was it that their land owning friends could make a few bob out of them? Most of us saw through the claims, and we were more than right.
The second is that the raw numbers do not tell the whole story.
If history tells us anything it is that the rubble, boulder and concrete enclosure is not going to need much in the way of maintenance over its 120 year lifespan. And looking at the design of the generators they appear to be of the unplug, unbolt and lift type, where swapping units for maintenance, refurb or replacement is done with the minimum of disruption. As far as costs go all that can be done today is to project them (guesstinmate) based on other similar but not the same installations.
Hinckley is a different animal. There are thousands of engineers out there who can tell us fairly accurately how much it will cost to maintain, handle contaminated waste, deal with spent fuel and then decommission the thing once its lifespan (about 40 years) is up, and all those costs will have to be x3 to match Swansea.
There is another aspect of Swansea that gets only a brief mention - the leisure economy. The 11sq/km body of water will be lake like and suitable for all sorts of water based activities: dinghy sailing, canoe or kayaking, water skiing, open water swimming.... even a full blown water park. There is the potential to create an annual multi-million pound new industry to partly offset the cost of the generating side of things.
However, I do get it that you and Abbott are not in favour, and I understand that. I have a big dislike for one element of biomass fuels, especially the growing of fuels on arable land specifically to burn to create electricity.
