It all started when the Gorran School got the bright idea that a wind turbine would solve all their electrical bills while doing some feel good environmentalism. The BBC was ecstatic when they reported on it back in 2008:
A Cornish primary school could soon be almost completely powered by a single wind turbine.
The turbine should be up and running by the end of March
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Gorran Primary School on the Roseland, has secured more than £50,000 from different agencies to carry out the work on the 15m (49ft) high turbine.
It should be up and running at the end of March at the school made famous by Anne Treneer’s autobiography The Schoolhouse in the Wind.
The head teacher Matthew Oakley says it should save the school £5,000 a year.
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And then, reality came crashing down to Earth:
Wind brings down turbine 02/12/2009 The Newquay Voice
THE eco-dream of a village school turned into a Friday 13th nightmare when high winds destroyed their wind turbine.
Two blades flew off from the 15m tall turbine in Gorran School’s playing field during the bad weather earlier this month. The turbine was part of the school’s £53,000 plan to generate its own electricity,
On the afternoon of Friday, November 13, the school was advised to turn on the brakes to stop the turbine, but the brakes failed, causing two blades to detach in the early hours of Saturday morning.
A concerned parent said: “Thank God it happened when the children were not out on the field. Looking at the size and weight of those rotor blades, I dread to think what would have happened if they had snapped off while they were there.”
…
This is not the first problem Gorran School have experienced with their wind turbine. Only seven months after it was erected in July 2008 it went on the blink. It was repaired by the manufacturers at the time at no cost to the school, and they were reimbursed for the lost generation while the turbine was not working.
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Now today, the company has walked away from the mess according to the Telegraph, and the school has a pile of scrap:
Eco-friendly school left out of pocket after ‘unproven’ wind turbine breaks
An eco-friendly school has been left £55,000 out of pocket after its wind turbine broke – with governors admitting that it was based on “completely unproven technology”.
The company that installed the turbine has gone bust leaving the school with a pile of scrap.
The Gorran School in Cornwall revealed its 15 metre turbine in 2008 which was designed to provide it with free electricity – and sell any surplus power to the National Grid.
The system was seen as a green blueprint for clean, sustainable energy for schools nationwide and received grants from various bodies including the EDF power firm.
But soon after being installed the wind turbine became faulty and after a few months seized up – showering the school’s playing field with debris.
Since then the school has been locked in a battle with suppliers Proven Energy which has now gone into administration leaving the school with little hope of any money being returned – and a pile of scrap in their field.
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Having learned nothing in Gorran, they are still at it, from the BBC on August 19th:
19 August 2011 Last updated at 03:31 ET
Wind energy for Gorran community
The turbines at Gorran may be generating power within a matter of weeks
The small community of Gorran in south Cornwall will soon be generating its own energy and exporting surplus to the national grid.
Work to erect two community wind turbines at a cost of £500,000 is well under way.
Community Power Cornwall, a local co-operative, is behind the project.
The organisation has helped the villagers in Gorran to look at its energy needs and developed a renewable energy scheme.
‘Big symbol’
Villager Ella Westland, from Transition Gorran, said clean energy production and low carbon living were “things many villagers have been working towards for a long time”.
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Yeah ‘Big Symbol’ alright – of FAIL. Just look at all the FAIL in California.
It’s a two year old story – what has happened since I wonder?
I found the time capsule the amusing part of the 2008 BBC news story:-
“To coincide with the start of the project the children will be sealing their aspirations for the future of the Earth in a time capsule.
The capsule will be buried by the foundations of the wind turbine until 2058, which will mark the 50th anniversary of the turbine. “
The reason this madness spreads as easily and as widely as it does is right there in the text of the article, of course:
That’s “something for nothing” not just once but twice, and if you wave “free” £$£$£$ in front of enough people, you’re going to net at least some of them. Bear in mind, in this context, that less than a month ago, another huge price increase (in my case almost 20%) has just been slapped onto our electricity bills to pay for subsidising this BS – which will no doubt help other “brave pioneers of clean energy” to make this, er, “bold step into a carbon-free future”. I’m sure the deal also comes with congratulatory letters from various “authorities” and favourable coverage (as seen above) in the local media … wow, who doesn’t want to be a hero? Not just a hero, either … you make a profit out of it, too! Yeah, so you’ll be left all on your ownsome looking a right idiot when it all goes belly-up, but then even mentioning that would be so negative.
Moral: Never trust politicians. Rider: Particularly when they’re offering you more money than makes any sense to go along with their brain-dead policies.
pauline says:
“October 6, 2011 at 5:06 pm
epetitions.direct.gov.uk%2Fpetitions
repeal the climate change act
all uk bloggers on wuwt might feel like adding their name to this”
Wrong link – try: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/2035
what is the problem with solar power panelsn…or have i missed something?
To Axel: It isn’t just that Gorran is a beautiful area, but it is quite small and those windmills are very, very tall. If they are likely to fall all over the place, a lot of people could get hurt/killed. As someone else said, thank goodness the children weren’t in the playing fields when the school turbine keeled over.
To Pauline: Ref solar panels, yes they have a part to play but don’t forget that they stop working at night, and that here in Britain we don’t get that much sun. One source of power that I am surprised is not being investigated more fully is that which could be obtained by drilling down into the ground to tap the heat below. Yes, I know it would be a long, long drill, but the heat is there below, especially in Cornwall (where Gorran is situated) which is on granite and this would produce more heat than, say, drilling into limestone..
I am also suprised that water power is not used more extensively
pauline says:
October 7, 2011 at 2:11 am
“what is the problem with solar power panelsn…or have i missed something?”
Well they don’t kill you (provided the inverter doesn’t explode due to H2 accumulation while you’re standing next to it; and you don’t touch the approx. 1 kV lines; and you don’t fall off the rooftop while doing installation or maintenance) but they’re way more expensive than wind. So, let’s assume onshore wind is twice as expensive as fossil fuel electricity, then you can assume solar to be eight times more expensive than fossil , at the moment.
And of course, like wind, it’s highly intermittent so if you need a steady supply, who doesn’t, you need battery banks, doubling your price again – and they will only get you through the evening; if you need storage capacity for several cloudy days, you can always add more batteries, driving the price completely into the ridiculous.
But there’s always subsidies.
“pauline says:
October 7, 2011 at 2:42 am
I am also suprised that water power is not used more extensively”
Very little water power potential in the UK. Though a number of scottish glens are now being destroyed to produce miniscule amounts of electricity
Wind generators were once a very desirable product and totally reliable. They were also self governing and self feathering in high winds and maintenance was a decadal thing. They were also very efficient and powered hundreds of thousands of homesteads and farms. That was seventy or eighty years ago. Jacobs in America produced the best and his pioneering in propeller design catapulted the aircraft industry into the modern age. WTF the experience of propellors from high performance airliners in the 40 ties to sixties is available to all. It is not rocket science and I can only conclude that these builders of shonky propellors are like a protected species. It is not hard to govern and protect a propellor even tho it is working as an impellor, we have the technology. The green thing is a scam, with scam companies that have no responsibility. Rant over.
Water Power: Very useful, very efficient, very low cost, very low “fuel” costs – once the original dam and power plant is built.
Drawbacks?
BECAUSE it is so useful, so efficient, and so low-cost … ALL of the useable (practical and cost effective!) dams and hydro-electric power plants are already built. Many of those in place are being blown up and the dams destroyed – BY ENVIRO’s – in their idealistic, anti-human efforts to “cleanse” the earth of human influence. (The dams being blown – I understand some 200 so far – are lower-level dams, mostly in the arid west – that served both irrigation and power generation. Even those that produce (store) only water – such as California’s Hetch Hetchy dam near Yosemite – have been targeted for destruction by the enviro’s. Seems they’d prefer seeing the canyon walls bleak and mud-scarred and empty rather than drink water……
Worldwide, there are about 4 or 5 dam sites left “open” for that have not been used yet. Pump storage? Worldwide, US-wide, and across the English-speaking world, enviro’s oppose those pumped storage sites perhaps even more viciously than they do “regular” lakes. And the potential pump storage sites are even MORE restrictive than simple block dams, since you need a constant source of water below in the river to “pump up”, an empty “lake” high up above the river, and power available from something else during off-peak hours to run the pumps. Further, if you have a pumped storage site, the mountains and hills are going to increase expense and land purchase costs as well. Even the 1930’s power storage ponds near Niagara were opposed by the Indian tribes up when only a few hundred acres from their reservation were needed.
pauline says:
October 7, 2011 at 2:11 am
what is the problem with solar power panelsn…or have i missed something?
How about the UK’s reputation for dank gloomy weather?
Sonya Porter says:
October 7, 2011 at 2:29 am
“To Pauline: Ref solar panels, yes they have a part to play but don’t forget that they stop working at night, and that here in Britain we don’t get that much sun. One source of power that I am surprised is not being investigated more fully is that which could be obtained by drilling down into the ground to tap the heat below. ”
That’s hydrothermal, it is done, and it often fails because you have to do all the drilling just right before you can test whether you did it correctly. Often, instead of the projected, say 75 MW you’ll only get 35 MW because the water just doesn’t seep as fast through the hot rocks as you thought it would, so you start drilling all over again…
Again, it’s a cost problem – you can produce electricity that way if you throw arbitrarily high amounts of money at it.
A few miles East of Norwich’s UEA lies the village of Acle. It was reported in the local paper that they are in the middle of a £250,000 project to install solar & wind power. I couldn’t find the story online, so I’ve scanned it and uploaded here: http://i52.tinypic.com/4tttog.jpg
Unfortunately the figures quoted in the article don’t add up. The claimed savings only come to £108,000 over the 20 year contract. So that must mean that Solarventus gets the remaining £142,000 – which is coming from the pockets of the rest of us energy consumers.
I don’t know what make and size turbine is being used, but I imagine it’s going to be similar to those discussed in this post.
Bertram Felden says:
October 7, 2011 at 1:38 am
“It’s a two year old story – what has happened since I wonder?”
The news is that Proven Energy has folded now. They were in the news over the past weeks because they had to recall one of their products, a 10m diameter turbine. Looks like the cost broke their neck now.
It seems that the link to the story in the Telegraph now only goes to a blank page…..
Belay that last remark about the link disappearing….it has ‘magically’ appeared after refreshing Chrome. Ooops
i am not an energy expert, but have considered alternative power sources, (I like to be prepared and not over rely on what comes from the plug) hence coal and logs store for winter. But all the reports regarding solar power seem rather over-hyped and I am not sure I believe any of it, so is there an idiots guide to solar energy that is not from interested parties like the UK government or energy companies? We do get some sun sometimes in UK, It was sunny yesterday for a bit..
I totally take your point about water power. but I had read about very small scale proposed water generation schemes in National Parks turned down because of the environmental effects.
pauline says:
October 7, 2011 at 2:11 am
what is the problem with solar power panels…or have i missed something?
Well, let’s look at them. Without forced subsidies or fake political pressure.
Solar hot water for heating water for household heat and pools can work – IF you are patient and can afford cutting the trees around your collectors.
Solar panels for power fail.
The sun’s power is limited by your latitude: It does NOT matter what you might want to do, you can never get more power than what’s available at noon. Call that 100 watts.
So, with an ideal collector, you can almost get 100 watts from your collector from 11:00 to 1:00. I’m being generous here, it actually slumps down a little bit more than that. So, 2 hours receiving 100 watts = 200 watt-hours so far on your perfectly clear day with no clouds. No rain. No humidity. No haze. No dust. No sea spray or salt. Perfectly clean collectors. No scratches, perfectly aligned with the sun every minute of the day.
Now, from 10:00 to 11:00 and from 1:00 to 2:00 you will get less power. About 85 (maybe 90%) percent of your maximum max on average. From 9:00 to 10:00 and from 2:00 to 3:00 even less, figure about 75% to 80% of your noon maximum. Before 9:00 am and after 3:00 pm you get very little for a very basic reason: The sun’s energy is being absorbed by ever-increasing atmospheric thickness. For example, you can’t even briefly glimpse towards the sun near noon for even a second, but can look for long minutes at sunset with no discomfort.
So, your 100 watt, perfectly directed and controlled solar panel is now getting the following from its theoretical 24 hours of 100 watts production = 2400 watts. 80+90+100+100+90+80 = 340 watts received. Out of 2400 watts that you paid for. You are getting power for 6 hours per day. And NOTHING the rest of the day.
If you want 100 watts of power the rest of the day and night, you need not a 100 watt solar panel, but a 400 watt solar panel. And a storage system. And you must convert the 400 watts of maximum power at noon to stored power delivered at a 100 watt rate at midnight.
But, to deliver that 100 watts at midnight, you need to deliver 110 watts from your convertor at midnight, which means you need to deliver 140 to 160 watts to the battery at noon (since batteries lose much of the input energy when converting it from electricity to chemical energy and back to electrical energy), which means you need to deliver 160 to 170 watts FROM the solar converter at noon …all this to to get 100 watts back from the device at midnight.
So, we have established you need to install 180 watts of panels to get 100 watts back from your system. You can get effective power only 1/4 of the day, so you need to install 4 x 180 = 720 watts of panels to deliver 100 watts all day.
But it gets worse.
Now, you had to pay for a very expensive electronic converter to change that received power from sunlight to electricity. But that converter and charge controller needs to be sized NOT for 100 watts, but for your maximum charge and discharge rates: you have to pay for 730 watts of converter and storage and cables capacity to get 100 watts out! (And remember, you loose about 85% of your received power to conversion losses going both ways.) You need to buy a very dangerous, very hazardous power storage system. Very expensive high-current cables, plugs, connections, wiring panels, breakers, fuses, and switches. Very expensive grounding system – or risk you house getting burned out from lightening strikes and battery fires. A battery charging system, venting system, and secure (fire safe,hydrogen safe, vented storage room.
Now, all the above assumed you have paid for a very expensive solar tracking system to mount and aim your collectors directly at the sun all hours of the day. Use a less-expensive passive tracker, or a simple flat panel at a fixed position, and you lose even more potential power.
Clouds? Spray? Dirt? Dust? Storms? Most areas, you need to multiply your receiver capacity by another factor of 3 to 4…
But that’s OK. The taxpayers are paying for all of this waste. Just to make you feel better.
Thank-you RACookPE1978
It is what i suspected, essentially the only way it can be profitable is as the taxpayers expense, this could change anytime, so will be abandoning this current idea in total and going back to my coal and log store.. The trouble is all the information general public can find is from the power companies and government backed bodies such as Energy Trust (which all sound too good to be true) etc and we all know from reading this site that their calculations may be off somewhat.
So thank-you for your answer
It is still sunny ish in UK, it was even sunny in Yorkshire last week which is even rarer
Kevin Kilty says:
Is “green energy” dependent on an ignorant public for its implementation?
Oh yes absolutely. If my impression from forum discussions here in Germany is any measure, the majority think that wind turbines and solar panels must be cheaper than coal plants because they don’t consume fuel. They don’t get it that this fact alone means nothing, that the overall costs involves maintenance, write-downs, real estate, staff and many others. They certainly never get the consequences that the augmented costs of “green energy” mean GDP losses & ultimately job losses in all sectors of the economy.
pauline says:
what is the problem with solar power panelsn…or have i missed something?
The cost. According to many studies on the subject, the cost per kilowatthour solar power is about ten times the cost of the same kilowatthour from a coal plant. The main cost factor is write down of the original investment – but there are others such as maintenance, grid, real estate, electronics – , while the power output for that investment is modest. So that gives a very bad cost to output ratio, in fact the worst of all common electricity generation methods. Coal and nuclear are among the best.
I am also suprised that water power is not used more extensively
It is actually used, and its cost ratio can be competitive especially from large reservoirs. But the geography is not suitable everywhere, so there are limits to its development.
RACookPE1978 says:
October 7, 2011 at 3:34 am
An awful lot of problems with your post on solar power, Cook. The biggest is you describe a system for getting off the grid. If you’re going to do that it pretty much means you’re going to get radical in other ways too like ditching 120vac appliances and going to 12vdc like you find in travel trailers.
Most people are already connected to the grid so they don’t need to go gridless. The economic advantages of grid-ties are enormous. You don’t need to overbuild your generating capacity and you don’t need storage systems. You simply put up your solar panels, AC convertors, and hook this up to a grid-tie. When the sun’s shining you’re using your own generated electricity or if you’re not using as much as you’re generating the excess if fed back onto the grid so someone else can use it. If the sun isn’t shining you draw your power from the grid.
This is very nearly economical in many circumstances today. There are a few major impediments. Grid-ties are prohibitively expensive mostly due to lack of standards and lack of scale in manufacturing. AC convertors are also rather pricey again due to lack of manufacturing scale. Solar panel cost/efficiency needs to improve. This seems to be mostly manufacturing issues compounded by too many competing technologies but this is normal in infant industries. Eventually winners are sorted out from losers in both technology and manufacturers and those that remain standing plummet in price as economy of scale in the winning technologies takes hold.
Yet another problem is the cost differential between price you pay for electricity and the price you get paid for electricity. Electric companies offer only a small fraction of the retail market price of electricity for any excess that individuals with grid-ties feed back into the system. If they were willing to pay what they charge it would actually be profitable to generate your own solar electricity for sale in ideal situations. The main justification for paying only a fraction of the retail market price is that the electric company owns the distribution/metering/billing infrastructure which has a substantial capital, maintenance, and operating cost associated with it which individuals supplying electricity to the grid would be getting for free. Regardless of this, though, at least for electricity you use as you produce it, you save the full retail cost of it.
I haven’t stopped giggling since I first read this story three days ago. Couldn’t have happened to a more misguided bunch of loonies.
And they get a pretty critical panning in The Daily Mail too, especially the comments
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2045862/Schools-green-dream-blown-away–55-000-wind-turbine-breaks-firm-installed-goes-bust.html
The really worrying thing is that they get to teach the chldren at an impressionable age.