Popham airfield wind farms

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Member for

12 years 11 months

Posts: 6,535

Popham airfield is facing the possibility of sharing its space with an adjacent wind farm. My details are sketchy and I can't provide a link but, signatures to a petition against this proposal are being sought on at least one of the Webpages associated and titled Woodmancott Farm.

Please make known your opposition. Popham is too much of a resource to GA to be in any way compromised.

John Green

Original post

Member for

11 years 5 months

Posts: 11,141

I have signed although living miles away but have known the area very well for decades and visit friends nearby frequently. These abominations should be allowed no where. They are aesthetically, economically and environmentally insupportable.

Member for

16 years 10 months

Posts: 313

Agreed. Most ridiculous and useless inventions ever!

Petition duly signed.

Wicked Willp :diablo:

Member for

12 years 3 months

Posts: 112

If this madness continues at the current rate, well all be living at the bottom of a wind turbine before too long!

Petition signed.

Member for

11 years 5 months

Posts: 11,141

Indeed - the government is committed to another 30 or is it 40,000 to achieve their unachievable guarantees to Brussels.......!!:mad:

Member for

16 years 3 months

Posts: 1,813

Now't wrong with harvesting energy from the wind. It is just a matter of siting the equipment necessary to recover this low cost energy in appropriate places. Errrrrrr what has Brussels got to do with it, the wind blows all over the place?

Planemike

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11 years 5 months

Posts: 11,141

Nothing whastsoever - as long as it is economically viable. Which it isn't. One of the main reasons our energy bills are so high.

Ah, Brussels has everything to do with it. In case you hadn't noticed the EU binds its members to carbon emission levels which mean that we are having to close all our conventional power stations and replace them with low carbon production. But because we are so "green" we have committed ourselves to the most extreme reductions of any European country thus necessitating the erection of tens of thousands of windmills.

The result of all this is that we will not have enough energy production to meet anything like our needs in a few short years time added to which we have to build non-fossil fuel power stations to make sure we have all the energy we need when the wind doesn't blow.

It's a lose, lose situation. Actually it's a disaster.:mad:

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16 years 3 months

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Charlie..........

Can see you are not too keen on harvesting wind energy...!!! Think calling it a "disaster" is a slight over statement.

Planemike

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11 years 5 months

Posts: 11,141

Planemike...I have no problem harvesting wind energy, if it is commercially viable, as I did say. I have nothing against it in principle at all. DEFRA's own figures give about 30% efficiency for wind at sea and about 20% on land. Hardly an efficient resource, particularly as you have to have conventional power stations to back up the wind anyway. Utter folly.

We are likely to run out of home grown energy in about 5 years unless the government sees some sense. We will then be reliant on buying our energy from France, Russia and elsewhere. To me one of a government's prime responsibilities is to make sure we are self-sufficient in energy. So, to that end, I don't think disaster is too strong a word.

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16 years 3 months

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charlie............

Disaster, now you are being alarmist......... What you are forcasting just will not come to pass. Just cannot see where you are coming from. The ways of providing energy will continue to evolve just as they have one since Michael Faraday discovered the flow of electric current.

Just as a matter of interest what would be your preferred method of power generation?

Planemike

Member for

15 years 10 months

Posts: 686

Charlie..........

Can see you are not too keen on harvesting wind energy...!!! Think calling it a "disaster" is a slight over statement.

Planemike

The concept of an inexhaustible energy source is great, the stupidity with wind is simply it is no way reliable, we will need other forms of generating power to cover shortfalls, the idea of duplicating energy supplies doesn't make a right lot of sense.

It's a bit like expecting an employer to take someone on full time on full salary, then employee choosing when he/she works and at what rate.

Member for

11 years 5 months

Posts: 11,141

charlie............

Disaster, now you are being alarmist......... What you are forcasting just will not come to pass. Just cannot see where you are coming from. The ways of providing energy will continue to evolve just as they have one since Michael Faraday discovered the flow of electric current.

Just as a matter of interest what would be your preferred method of power generation?

Planemike

Regrettably I am not. I am being realistic. Unfortunately those responsible have their heads firmly and immovably in the sand. Have you read the recent utterances from Ed Davey??!!

So ways of providing energy will evolve, will they? The one potentially immediate and viable source is shale gas which the government is playing cool, to say the least. What else have you in mind to solve the immediate problem?

We should have invested in 3rd/4th generation nuclear at least 10/15 years ago. Now we are scrabbling to decide what we should be doing. If we can dust the cobwebs of carbon emissions from our blinkered eyes we could of course invest in conventional fossil fuel generation.

Member for

12 years 3 months

Posts: 112

***

Think calling it a "disaster" is a slight over statement.

Planemike

Depends how much you value the countryside in its current form,(albeit fast disappearing) i.e without a 100'+ high white monstrosity every few hundred yards.

This is not about providing renewable energy. Its about making money for the (foreign) producers of the hardware.

We should be looking at the wastage of energy. Drive through a deserted industrial estate at night and see how many lights are on! How much energy and resources are wasted on yet another retail park that nobody needs or wants. Great if you are a maker of 'To Let' signs.

Anyone who thinks wind turbines are about saving the planet is being somewhat naive.

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12 years 11 months

Posts: 6,535

It probably would have saved a few shillings and much effort if someone in which ever Govt. was in power had consulted the small sailboat fraternity about the efficiency and general usefulness of generating power by wind.

I, and thousands of others sailing small boats, have played with wind powered generators for about thirty years. Why ? Looking for something for virtually nothing is one answer. Well, the numbers sold indicates that they work, don't they?

Sail boats, unless they are alongside and plugged into shore power have no reliable and continuous means of generating power which, in this electronic age we need in liberal amounts. We have to resort to whatever nature can provide which means either wind, solar or water turbine generation. All, without exception, take it from me, spasmodic and therefore unreliable.

Fact. The average wind speed around the British Isles is about 10mph. The lowest wind speed required to generate a low but not unreasonable amount of power, sufficient that is to make it all worthwhile is around 20mph. Already we are into a thought provoking problem.

If we were to have a week or so of gale force winds - a situation not unknown in these Isles. Wind driven generators will start to over produce. This energy (heat) which can't be used will have to be dumped via a 'heat sink'. Wind farm operators get paid by us for dumping excess energy. Gets better and better, doesn't it !

Earlier, I referred to the thousands of sailboat owners who have invested in power generation by wind. This would, on the face of it, indicate a success and a vindication for the wind lobby. Really? The only way that sailboat owners can justify the expense at the same time making a significant contribution to their power draw is by storing the power generated into a battery storage system.

There you have the answer to the question of the viability of power generation by wind. Aside from the aesthetics, the product of wind farm industrial generation has to be used as it is produced - it can't be stored.

DC power from wind generation on sailboats or any other user can be fed directly into battery storage thus feeding whatever gadgets the on board system maintains and looking after the health of the battery - again, surplus energy has to be dumped.

So, intermittent, unreliable service and product, heavily subsidised - sounds like a throwback to British industrial relations of the '70s. Question for the wind farm lobby - why are so many people so vociferously opposed to these monstrosities? They can't all be Luddites.

Please sign the Popham Airfield petition and any others.

Member for

11 years 5 months

Posts: 11,141


Question for the wind farm lobby - why are so many people so vociferously opposed to these monstrosities? They can't all be Luddites.

Indeed they are not - we are not. We are right. To quote from my earlier post about our esteemed leaders: "Unfortunately those responsible have their heads firmly and immovably in the sand. Have you read the recent utterances from Ed Davey??!!"

Nuff said!

Member for

12 years 3 months

Posts: 112

Further food for thought

The power generated by the wind varies with the cube of the wind speed. That means that if the wind speed drops from 40mph to 20mph, the power output does not drop by 50 per cent: it drops by 87.5 per cent. At 10mph, the wind produces only 1.56 per cent of the power generated by a 40mph wind.
The wind can never become a major source of power.

The only winners are the (mainly) foreign energy companies who, to quote Donald Trump, are ruining our country.

http://imageshack.us/a/img690/4180/wind20lobby20s20tel2012.jpg

Member for

11 years 5 months

Posts: 11,141

Thank you for posting that table. It is not only appalling that our leaders conspire in this reckless policy but that they do so without reviewing the science which is the driver for the whole fiasco. It is a commercial and moral act of total irresponsibility.

Member for

12 years 11 months

Posts: 6,535

Re 16

Bushell

Would it be possible to send a copy of that very useful table to Christopher Booker at the Sunday Telegraph ?

Member for

16 years 3 months

Posts: 1,813

Thank you for posting that table. It is not only appalling that our leaders conspire in this reckless policy but that they do so without reviewing the science which is the driver for the whole fiasco. It is a commercial and moral act of total irresponsibility.

Hey charlie........

Take it you are not too keen on wind energy ?!!!!! Wonder why you are not keen?

Have to say that I think they will be around for a while. Various devices have been used over the centuries to recover energy from the wind in a number of countries. For example much of the corn used in England was milled by wind power.

Planemike

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11 years 5 months

Posts: 11,141

Hey charlie........

Take it you are not too keen on wind energy ?!!!!! Wonder why you are not keen?

"Not keen" is hardly the phrase. If you have to wonder why I am so opposed to them you have not read my posts in which I very clearly set out the reasons for my opposition and more importantly the reasons why our obsession with them will firstly further increase consumer energy costs and secondly leave us desperately under sourced within a very few years.

Member for

12 years 11 months

Posts: 6,535

Planemike

Water mills even better. More reliable by a degree or two than wind -except during a drought.

That opening paragraph summarises the problem of the generation of electrical power by natural forces - reliability! Natural forces, because they are natural are unreliable.

One of the many problems with wind farms is that there is a lobby claiming that if we have enough of them, they will be a complete answer to our power deficit.

That, they can never be, because, they rely on natural sources of energy to make energy. So, if you covered the entire country and the surrounding sea to a limit of twelve miles out with windfarms sufficient to power the electrical needs of the entire country, some places would be without a cup of tea, others wouldn't be able to run a computer and the man who fell off his ladder and hurt his back wouldn't get an x-ray.

So, because of our extremely expensive obession with windfarms, we the taxpayer and consumer will be paying twice over. We will be paying for the windfarms plus the nuclear or gas or coal fired RELIABLE power stations that we need to support our power demand when the windfarms AREN'T WORKING.

Planemike. Please tell me you get it ?

Please sign the Popham petition.