January 13, 2010
UK Wind Farms
More environmentally friendly means of generating power is one of UK's highest priority in the coming future. The UK Government is said to be spending as much as £100 billion on wind farms to be built on coasts on various parts of the UK.
The venture is also presumed as a coordination between different power firms throughout the UK. Even foreign providers such as RWE of Germany, Statoil from Norway, and Vattenfall of Sweden are also said to be trying to cash-in on the deal.
It’s a very promising project in power generation as it will make the UK as a country with one of the most largest wind farms in the world. That is, if it does go through. Building of the windmills is likely to start by 2014.
There has previously been two wind farm projects and this is the country’s third but the previous two pales in comparison to this one.
Currently, existing wind turbines are fixed at the ocean floor 25km off the coast and under a water depth of 25m. For the third programme, wind turbines will be positioned at a depth of 60 meters and 205 km further off coast.
The Government is hoping that these new wind farms will deliver 1/3 of the country’s energy needs after 10 years. A lot of sites all over the UK have been found to be reliable resources of constant winds. Among these are the Irish Sea, Isle of Wight, Hornsea, Bristol Channel and the largest site is said to be designated at Dogger Bank.
If the latest project becomes a reality, as much as 32 gigawatts of electricity will be yielded and allocated to nearby homes.
Furthermore, the UK is said to have the most resources of wind in the world. Estimates say that the UK has a sufficient amount of wind resource to power the nation three times.
The quantity of output will differ depending on each wind farm. The smallest wind farm is expected to create approximately 600 mw whereas the largest will have a 9,000 mw electric output.
In spite of the positive thoughts connected with wind power, there are still lots of hurdles that need to be overcome. For one, they only supply power if there is wind and the quantity of power, in terms of watts, will differ depending on the wind’s velocity.
The cost of building a wind farm also hovers at £3 million while a gas power plant only costs £1 million.
Harnessing energy that creates less emissions has been one of UKs main goals. Wave energy generators are one example in which electricity is produced with wave motion from the sea.
The UK government is also setting aside billions to be allocated to building nuclear power plants. Though nuclear power is not 100% answer in terms of environmental point of view, it generates additional power than any other source of energy and produces 0 emmission.
If the nation gets its source of energy from environmentally sound ways such as wind farms, a much more cleaner and energy efficient UK will benefit more citizens through inexpensive energy price and creation of jobs.
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