UK reveals ambitious plan to power every home with wind energy by 2030

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In context: The United Kingdom is no stranger to tackling topics like climate change and clean energy. To name a couple examples, leaaders have considered offering citizens cash payments to switch away from combustion engine vehicles, and in 2018, the country proposed regulations that would require new homes to have EV chargers built-in.

The country isn't stopping there, though. As part of a broader push to hasten its transition to cleaner energy sources, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson now reportedly claims the government will invest around £160 million (that's roughly $207 million) in offshore wind technology.

To be more specific, that money will be used to build factories that can create these energy-generating wind turbines, as well as ports that can deploy them.

The UK will attempt to power every single home in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales using these turbines by 2030. All in all, the UK aims to generate around 40GW of wind energy to accomplish that feat.

That's an incredibly ambitious goal, and it's difficult to say whether or not UK leaders will be able to pull it off. When your task amounts to essentially transitioning an entire country over to a different form of energy, ten years doesn't seem like much time at all.

Still, there's always the possibility that the UK's leaders will surprise us and the rest of the world. We wish them the best of luck in their endeavors, and we'll keep you updated on their progress over time.

Image credit: General Electric, The University of British Columbia

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10 years ago the UK had about 30-40% coal usage for electricity now it's less than 5% with natural Gas and wind being 50/50 for electricity generation. So it's easily achievable. The technology and manufacturing could easily be an export from the UK to the rest of the world.

As for home building regulations I don't think the UK government does enough, great an EV home charger on new homes... Why aren't solar panels standard now? By doing that they would halve the cost of solar panels over night and there would be demand from homes that don't have solar panels.
 
The technology and manufacturing could easily be an export from the UK to the rest of the world.
Why aren't solar panels standard now? By doing that they would halve the cost of solar panels over night and there would be demand from homes that don't have solar panels.
The rest of the world doesn't have weather as shitty as in UK, which also doesn't get enough sun to justify use of solar panels.
 
The rest of the world doesn't have weather as shitty as in UK, which also doesn't get enough sun to justify use of solar panels.
I get that argument but I've seen what some people generate from their panels and tbf it would easily cover half of my annual usage, surely that's a good thing if the average usage of power was less from the Grid?
Regarding exports there's plenty of countries that can benefit from wind power, so I don't know what you're on about?
 
Regarding exports there's plenty of countries that can benefit from wind power, so I don't know what you're on about?
I'm not a fan of wind turbines, not only because they are useless in many parts of the world, but also large wind turbines require dedicated maintenance by large companies, which costs a lot. With solar panels however, maintenance can be carried out by any private individual. And efficiency of solar panels keeps going up, which is not the case with wind turbines.

In the long run, the cost of installation and maintenance of large wind turbines doesn't pay back. With solar panels however, they do pay for themselves, and it keeps improving.
 
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I'm not a fan of wind mils, not only because they are useless in many parts of the world, but also large wind mils require dedicated maintenance by large companies, which costs a lot. With solar panels however, maintenance can be carried out by any private individual. And efficiency of solar panels keeps going up, which is not the case with wind mils.

In the long run, the cost of installation and maintenance of large wind mills doesn't pay back. With solar panels however, they do pay for themselves, and it keeps improving.

Sorry to be that guy, but wind mills grind up corn or wheat. Wind turbines produce electricity : )

Really though, if they were serious about not using coal they'd go nuclear. It's safe now, the biggest obstacle is cost, but with the new small designs even that's getting worked out.

Check out TerraPower or look up small modular reactor - the new designs are passively safe, so they don't need to stay turned on which was the fault in the 1970's design of the Fukishima plant.
 
Really though, if they were serious about not using coal they'd go nuclear. It's safe now, the biggest obstacle is cost, but with the new small designs even that's getting worked out.
UK cannot meet the safe-distance requirements from residential areas.
 
Really though, if they were serious about not using coal they'd go nuclear. It's safe now, the biggest obstacle is cost, but with the new small designs even that's getting worked out.
UK cannot meet the safe-distance requirements from residential areas.
I swear we had a nuclear power plant being built? By the French and Chinese? Let me see if I can find an article on it...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54181748

Interesting, Government are now trying to replace the Chinese as investors (not too surprising as they made a silly promise on the investment return) but looks like in good old typical UK fashion, it's taking us years to decide on, well anything, let alone start planning and building.

Edit:

Hinkley Point! That was the name of the Nuclear power plant I was on about!

Hinkley Point C Nuclear power plant, they've been building it for years.
 
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I'm not a fan of wind turbines, not only because they are useless in many parts of the world, but also large wind turbines require dedicated maintenance by large companies, which costs a lot. With solar panels however, maintenance can be carried out by any private individual. And efficiency of solar panels keeps going up, which is not the case with wind turbines.

In the long run, the cost of installation and maintenance of large wind turbines doesn't pay back. With solar panels however, they do pay for themselves, and it keeps improving.
That's utter tosh, honestly I don't know what articles you've read but you should see and read what they're doing in the North sea, 20MW turbines and they can install them very quickly compared to building a new power station. I could understand your argument if you was on about 1-2MW turbines but since 10-20MW you're wrong, they produce loads more energy that they pay for themselves and the engineers needed quite quickly.
 
I swear we had a nuclear power plant being built? By the French and Chinese? Let me see if I can find an article on it...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54181748

Interesting, Government are now trying to replace the Chinese as investors (not too surprising as they made a silly promise on the investment return) but looks like in good old typical UK fashion, it's taking us years to decide on, well anything, let alone start planning and building.

Edit:

Hinkley Point! That was the name of the Nuclear power plant I was on about!

Hinkley Point C Nuclear power plant, they've been building it for years.
We have George Osborne to thank for that, what a Muppet. I wonder what will get built first Hinckley or HS2 lol.
 
I'm all for wind power but let's be realistic there are times when there's bugger all wind. So there will be times when wind generation is in overabundance and times where it is very little. At the current levels last year the high was 12,500 MW the low was about 600 MW. This is typical Boris waffle. https://winderful.diascreative.net
 
The rest of the world doesn't have weather as shitty as in UK, which also doesn't get enough sun to justify use of solar panels.
I've managed 1.89 MWh on my compromised 3.6 kW solar panels in Lancashire which is not useless. Contrary to belief it doesn't always rain in the UK though yesterday it was more than damp.
 
Most comments cover the issues. The main problem for the USA is that our fossil fuel producers have yet to grasp the idea of rolling over their processes to wind & solar. With the ability of AC these currents can be transported thousands of miles with little to no losses so development of many of the large wastelands into both wind and solar farms is easily available; they simply need to understand the benefits to the environment and being able to maintain their "future" customers ....
 
Well, if you don't have coastline, turbines become far more invasive. Solar panels are great - IF you don't go on the cheap and get the ones that make your roof leak all the time... Our school district had a solar program for awhile - and found out that the maintenance on the roofs of the schools far outweighed any energy savings :(
 
That's utter tosh, honestly I don't know what articles you've read but you should see and read what they're doing in the North sea, 20MW turbines and they can install them very quickly compared to building a new power station. I could understand your argument if you was on about 1-2MW turbines but since 10-20MW you're wrong, they produce loads more energy that they pay for themselves and the engineers needed quite quickly.
agreed, here is one example:
GE Haliade X - 12MW wind turbine
https://www.ge.com/renewableenergy/wind-energy/offshore-wind/haliade-x-offshore-turbine

maintenance costs are also being driven down significantly thanks to new iOT solutions. Wind power is great! I'd also love to see a solar panel on top of every house to be honest. It is definitely not that expensive anymore and efficiency has improved a lot. Combining wind and solar should be the way imo.
 
I have full confidence in the Conservatives to make good on this promise.... /s

Ambitious? £160 million is very small change when they have just "spaffed" £13 billion on a non-working track and trace system. A system that had been designed to run critical processes using an out-of-date Microsoft Excel spreadsheet... it amazes me that the BBC will toe Gov lines putting this all down as simply a "computer error".

Just as PM Johnson promised to build 40 new hospitals, train 50,000 nurses or deliver 20,000 new police officers (which is still down from the 21,000 the Tory's cut previously since 2010) this is the latest in a long line of soundbites designed to print headlines for those who don't normally follow politics.
 
Another big government waste of taxpayer money IMO.Wind turbines are expensive to make, install and the maintenance is very high.They mainly exist to appease environmentalists and avoid carbon taxes prevalent in the EU. The money would better be spent on either nuclear or natural gas plants.
 
In context: The United Kingdom is no stranger to tackling topics like climate change and clean energy. To name a couple examples, leaaders have considered offering citizens cash payments to switch away from combustion engine vehicles, and in 2018, the country proposed regulations that would require new homes to have EV chargers built-in.

The country isn't stopping there, though. As part of a broader push to hasten its transition to cleaner energy sources, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson now reportedly claims the government will invest around £160 million (that's roughly $207 million) in offshore wind technology.

To be more specific, that money will be used to build factories that can create these energy-generating wind turbines, as well as ports that can deploy them.

The UK will attempt to power every single home in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales using these turbines by 2030. All in all, the UK aims to generate around 40GW of wind energy to accomplish that feat.

That's an incredibly ambitious goal, and it's difficult to say whether or not UK leaders will be able to pull it off. When your task amounts to essentially transitioning an entire country over to a different form of energy, ten years doesn't seem like much time at all.

Still, there's always the possibility that the UK's leaders will surprise us and the rest of the world. We wish them the best of luck in their endeavors, and we'll keep you updated on their progress over time.

Image credit: General Electric, The University of British Columbia

Permalink to story.


I think that fitting Solar panels to everybody's roof would be better. A lot quieter too.
 
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