Electricity Generation Hydro Board Pylons and Windfarm Three Bladed Wind Turbines Disused Airfield Boyndie
On 18th December 2006, the British government gave planning consent for the world's largest offshore wind farm. It is to be built 12 miles off of the Kent coast and will include 341 turbines. Parts of the 'London Array', as it is called, have already been constructed and are operational. Wind farms in different countries yield different amounts of electricity, because of differences in prevailing wind patterns, siting of the turbines, and the fact that early turbine designs were considerably less efficient and capable of adapting quickly to changes in wind direction and speed. For example, an Oxford University study of the wind over the past 35 years found that UK turbines would have produced 27% of their peak power generating capacity, compared with 20% in Denmark and 15% in Germany. An important limiting factor of wind power is variable power generated by wind farms. In most locations the wind blows only part of the time, which means that there has to be back-up capacity of conventional generating capacity to cover periods that the wind is not blowing. To address this issue it has been proposed to create a supergrid of interconnected windfarms across western Europe, ranging from Denmark across the southern North Sea to England and the Celtic Sea to Ireland, and further south to France and Spain especially in Higueruela which is considered the the biggest Eolian park of the world. The idea is that by the time a low pressure area has moved away from Denmark to the Baltic Sea the next low appears of the coast of Ireland. Therefore, while it is true that the wind is not blowing everywhere all of the time, it will always be blowing somewhere. Such a supergrid would therefore reduce the need for backup capacity.
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Location: Boyndie Drome Boyndie Scotland Grampian Region
Photo credit: © David Gowans / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
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