On different forums, when the subject of wind turbines and the enviroment has been raised, I have added to the objections list. The work going on in Chale to install solar power and air heat pumps is I believe the way forward to cut down our use of fossil fuels.
I'm not a tree hugger, I don't believe that we are experiencing global warming, but I do believe we need alternatives to fossil fuels and I believe solar is the way to go.
Development started in the field of solar power back in 1959 by the well known consumer electronics company Sharpe.
Up until recently the technology involved has had 2 major drawbacks.
1. As the name implies, it relied on sunlight to produce electricity. Ideal for countries that have the advantage of many hours of sun, unfortunately not so good for poor Old Blighty.
2. The storage of the power produced by the solar collectors. This was handled by batteries, but to be able to store enough to run household appliances, you needed a lot of them and we are talking car battery size not Duracell size. Lead acid batteries as in car batteries prefer to be trickle charged, as is the norm for them when attached to a car, if they are constantly charged and discharged the lead plates inside the battery soon wear out and make the battery useless. Constant replacement of batteries is expensive.
Both these problems for running a household on solar energy have been overcome. The technology photovoltaic cells, which can be found on calculators, can now harness power through daylight rather than brilliant sunlight. This breakthrough has made it possible for even our often sunless climate to produce power.
As for the storage system, well that hasn't been completely sorted as of yet, the fully solar powered car for instance is a few years off, there still isn't a battery that can hold enough juice to propel an electric engine for long, but for the running of a house there is no storage required, it's what you could call live burn.
All the electric powered appliances that are switched on while the system is producing electric will be powered by what is being produced. If you are out at work say, or sat reading a book and only your fridge freezer is running, your solar system will be producing a surplus of electric that is not needed and so is passed back to the grid.
Yes unfortunately you will still have to be connected to the grid, and still pay for the electricity that you use from your supplier, but, the system is set up so that you sell back the surplus to your supplier. Along with your existing electric meter that reads the amount of used electricity, you will have another meter installed that records how much surplus power you have transferred back to the grid, thus reducing your bill. Of course this is household dependant, a family of 4 consumption of electric is totally different to a retired couples. The break even point would be to produce enough surplus during the day to use at night when the system produces nothing.
I believe this technology should become compulsory in all new builds. Imagine if all the 850, supposedly, planned houses that are supposed to be built at Pan, some when in the future, had this installed, each would be producing electric and reducing the strain on the grid. This system outshines (pardon the pun) the ugly and inefficient wind turbines that have no hope in competing in the amount of power that could be produced. This system also gives the incentive to the individual to look at how much power they actually waste, through being able to reduce the cost of their bills.
Where as if we rely on wind technology we are just replacing one form of bill slavery for another, having still to pay for mass produced power that is sold back to us.
What makes more sense to you?
five or six wind turbines that might power 6000 homes on a windy day.
Or 850 houses each producing some of their own power whatever the weather.
