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'Save Our Hills Moffat' - Please help in any way you can

Re: 'Save Our Hills Moffat' - Please help in any way you can

Postby logfish111 » Fri Jul 02, 2021 9:19 am

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Re: 'Save Our Hills Moffat' - Please help in any way you can

Postby gld73 » Fri Jul 02, 2021 7:14 pm

We all want electricity, but none of us want any method of electricity generation to be visible.... :wink:

(I used to live close to a couple of nuclear power stations, but although not the most natural and beautiful coastal features I've seen, they generated a lot of electricity and were there before I moved there so I had nothing to complain about. And I dislike seeing wind turbines from nearly every hill I go up, but I like the idea of low carbon generation more than fossil fuels being burned. Every method of generation has its drawbacks, but until we come up with an invisible way of generating it or wean ourselves off the need for it, we're just going to have to compromise :( )
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Re: 'Save Our Hills Moffat' - Please help in any way you can

Postby Sgurr » Sat Jul 03, 2021 9:35 pm

Sunset tripper wrote:



Alas, I am too old for their calculator, (only works after 1951) but I get the drift. EDUCATE WOMEN and you'll soon find population growth levelling off.
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Re: 'Save Our Hills Moffat' - Please help in any way you can

Postby Gleneagle5 » Mon Jul 05, 2021 7:45 pm

I'm in.
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Re: 'Save Our Hills Moffat' - Please help in any way you can

Postby Marty_JG » Tue Jul 06, 2021 3:06 pm

Lightfoot2017 wrote:They are obscenely subsidised, both directly and indirectly.


All emergent energy systems have taken public subsidy, be it nuclear or oil. The oil industry emerged though massive subsidisation and continues to get it in all sorts of quiet ways. Picking on one energy source for being subsidised is an exercise in cherry picking.

If a fraction of the resource that's gone into windfarms over the past 30+ years had gone into wave and tidal power, then Scotland (with c7000 miles of coastline) really could be the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy.


I think there is a lot to be said for tidal generation, but they are not without extra challenges. Doing anything in water becomes an exponential cost. Just look at the difference in costs between a supercars and superyachts. Hell, a bog-standard family yacht that looks like your granny decorated it dwarfs the cost of most top-end supercars. Whatever the R&D costs of windfarms is, you can add two or three or four decimal places to it, easily, to get to the same stage at sea.

We literally know more about the surface of the moon than the surface of the seabed, everything in water is more costly and more difficult. I'm not poo-pooing the concept, but gambling on it alone (whilst ignoring solar, wind and battery farms) is a risky all-in bet.


For me the future has to be nuclear. Anyone who cares to research the issue thoroughly will see the sense in that.


When nuclear works it is great. Sure. The problem is when it doesn't work, well, it's a big problem. Even if the health problems can be managed, the current estimated Fukushima cost to the Japanese taxpayer is 200 billion, itself a doubling of the previous estimate - do not swoon with surprise if it doubles again. But Japan with a GDP of 7 trillion will be able to handle it. And that was a piddly little disaster. Chernobyl's cost was so vast it is literally incalculable, a 2016 review of the many papers on the subject casually puts the total cost at "hundreds of billions". Scotland's GDP is 200 billion. We couldn't even begin to afford to clean-up after a nuclear disaster. Even a relatively mild one.

Part of the research should be risk management, the only way nuclear passes that is the expectation and requirement of no significant accidents.
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Re: 'Save Our Hills Moffat' - Please help in any way you can

Postby GForce1 » Wed Jul 07, 2021 11:42 pm

The size of the development really does seem out of proportion. The application will be larger than they require as they will expect it to be modified before getting through planning.

There is a lot of money to be made in renewables, with lots of faceless companies piling in.

I've worked in the energy industry for many years (including the design of wind farms) and if you think that renewable developers are ethical you'd be in for a surprise. Lot's of developments with no joined up thinking. Generators have no legal obligation to provide electricity, it doesn't mater if the overall system doesn't work to them. Scotland doesn't have a generating system that balances and it's only getting worse.

I'm all for renewables in the right places, but what's going on really is the wild west. There is no joined up thinking, and no interest in the landscape.
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Re: 'Save Our Hills Moffat' - Please help in any way you can

Postby jupe1407 » Thu Jul 08, 2021 8:20 am

As far as I can work out, the negatives of the main options of power generation are:

1. Nuclear - A very small chance of an accident, but not impossible and would ruin a massive area of land for tens of thousands of years.

2. Offshore/Tidal - Monumentally expensive, potential damage to marine environment

3. Fossil - Basically destroying the planet

4. Wind Farms - They spoiled a view on my walk a bit.

Obviously that's oversimplifying, and not entirely serious, but isn't a million miles off the mark. An absolutely minuscule proportion of Scotland is genuine "wilderness", almost all of it has been drastically altered by man in one form or the other over the years.
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Re: 'Save Our Hills Moffat' - Please help in any way you can

Postby Marty_JG » Thu Jul 08, 2021 4:14 pm

Current tech wind farms have impact on Aves and Chiroptera, dramatically scaling them up could have dramatic impact, and of course their output fluctuates dramatically.

They're good for a bit of top-up here and there but they are not reliable, so mass industrialising the natural landscape for a source of energy that isn't very good doesn't sound the perfect plan either.
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Re: 'Save Our Hills Moffat' - Please help in any way you can

Postby GForce1 » Thu Jul 08, 2021 6:15 pm

Except despite Scotland's moral stance on nuclear and gas we are totally reliant on them as a source of power.

When the wind's not blowing we seem to be happy to import power from south of the border generated from these 'unacceptable' sources. Total hypocrisy. Once Torness and Hunterston shut (in the near future) we will be totally dependent on imported power, mainly from natural gas.

As long as the overall system is not planned (and its not) there will be more and more speculative development. What we will end up with is a totally dysfunctional energy grid.

There are outside players waiting in the wings to step in with new gas power stations when the situation is totally out of control. They key thing is none of the current energy generators have any legal requirement to generate power...and they don't care. And they certainly don't care about protecting wild land.

My main objections are the lack of planning, companies profiteering from public money, building windfarms on peatland, and the harm being done to wild land. Our wild land, is maybe not truly 'wild', but is probably the most important natural resource we have. What's happening is similar to the 1980s forestry get rich scams, except the stakes are far higher.
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Re: 'Save Our Hills Moffat' - Please help in any way you can

Postby AspiringHiker » Thu Jul 08, 2021 6:26 pm

GForce1 wrote:They key thing is none of the current energy generators have any legal requirement to generate power...and they don't care.


Can they make profit without generating and selling electricity? I'm genuinely interested as you are suggesting power generation is not a core focus of windfarm operators.
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Re: 'Save Our Hills Moffat' - Please help in any way you can

Postby GForce1 » Thu Jul 08, 2021 6:47 pm

Yes they make substantial profit from generating power (and also from being told not to).

They key point is they have no legal requirement to provide power; it doesn't matter to them if the overall system doesn't work. We already have a totally unbalanced system, and it's getting worse. It used to be power infrastructure was built for the good of the country; now it is being built for profit. Vast sums of public money are being wasted.

A good example is Scottish Power; they sold all their hydro assets, including the Cruachan pumped storage scheme, as there is more money in wind. Nobody is interested in spending big money on what is really required; pumped storage schemes, new nuclear, etc.. It's all about the quick profit.

I'm not anti-renewables, far from it. I object to the destruction of wild land and the gaming of the system. The Scottish government can make all the claims it wants about 100% (equivalent) of electricity being generated by renewables. The fact is this is just a manipulation of the facts; Scotland causes substantial CO2 output by importing gas generated power from England.
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Re: 'Save Our Hills Moffat' - Please help in any way you can

Postby davemorrissey » Thu Jul 08, 2021 8:14 pm

I know of two pumped hydro projects in the works - Coire Glas and Loch Ness, but Coire Glas hasn't even gone to construction tender yet and is 3 years from starting. If my maths are correct, it would, from full, cover the UK's demand for one hour. That puts into perspective the amount of storage needed and it sounds like future options under development are much cleaner and less destructive than pumped hydro and lithium batteries.

Where would the £1.5bn required for these two projects come from?

I need to climb Sròn a' Choire Ghairbh again before construction starts. It was cloudy last time!
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Re: 'Save Our Hills Moffat' - Please help in any way you can

Postby AJ01 » Fri Jul 09, 2021 10:02 am

AspiringHiker wrote:
GForce1 wrote:They key thing is none of the current energy generators have any legal requirement to generate power...and they don't care.


Can they make profit without generating and selling electricity? I'm genuinely interested as you are suggesting power generation is not a core focus of windfarm operators.


Yes. When the wind farms are generating more electricity than the system needs, the generating companies are paid not to supply electricity. It's a scam, and what you get when politicians run things for political ends, nor for practical benefit.
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Re: 'Save Our Hills Moffat' - Please help in any way you can

Postby AspiringHiker » Fri Jul 09, 2021 2:28 pm

AJ01 wrote:
AspiringHiker wrote:
GForce1 wrote:Yes. When the wind farms are generating more electricity than the system needs, the generating companies are paid not to supply electricity. It's a scam, and what you get when politicians run things for political ends, nor for practical benefit.


Why is it a scam? As you say, constraint payments are paid to reduce/increase supply. The payment for reduction mostly go to wind; whereas payment for boosting generation mostly go to gas. I think there is a formal auction process for these constraint payments. So unless there is a reason why National Grid would pay more than lowest offer, the wind is probably the cheapest to switch off. To my knowledge, there is no carbon price/tax in UK which may well make switching off gas cheaper.

From my brief reading, part of the reason these payments are going up is huge increase in wind as share of electricity supply and ageing power grid which has bottlenecks between wind rich Scotland and power hungry Southern England.
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Re: 'Save Our Hills Moffat' - Please help in any way you can

Postby GForce1 » Fri Jul 09, 2021 9:50 pm

Erm.....I didn't type that. At no point did I say it's a scam.

My point is that no investment is being made in the infrastructure that is required for a balanced grid. That the Scottish government's claim Scotland is 100% renewable powered is false (current output from Scotland's wind farms is 2%, despite having 'equivalent' capacity to feed the country). That irreversible damage is being done to wild land with no real benefit. That lots of people are getting very rich.

We are already at the point Scotland generates more renewable power than it can use. We will get to a similar point for the UK. More joined up thinking is required, not just blindly building wind farms with lots of claims using the word 'equivalent'. And proper protection is required for wild land.
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