Added: 4 years ago
From: BritishSatelliteNews
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  • The UK will never get very much out of solar energy. The Sun simply does not shine very much there. I visited the UK several years ago and the Sun did not shine for the whole three weeks I was there. What will people do with their solar panels then?

  • But they have loads of wind and are developing tidelwave energy too. Being an european union country they can easyly produce solar energy in southern europe for their own use.

  • Windmills are a blight on the landscape. They are expensive, don't work when the wind blows too fast or too slow (or not at all). They are unpredictably intermittent. They are maintenance intensive. The turbines and generators EAT ball-bearings. You need several thousand just to replace one nuclear power plant. They also kill millions of birds. And as far as solar is concerned, how do you get the energy from Southern Europe to UK. Aren't the people in Southern Europe going to want to use it?

  • I am portuguese and live in the UK. My country is already covered with windmills where they are not seen as ugly (?). They are mostly being placed in the interior bringing income to landowners thru rent (usually small land owners) and jobs (the work intensity of it is seen as plus). After the first stage of implementation the idea now is to use them along with our dams. Using the energy to refill the dam with downstream water when electricity consumption is low

  • And release (or re-release) the water thru the hydroelectric turbines when consumption demands are high.

    If you are not impressed with the "beauty" of a windmill you can place them offshore. In any case if the choice was between going cold during the winter and having an ugly windmill somewhere out in the countryside, people will choose the ugly windmill. Those who do not agree now will change their minds if that cold winter does come.

  • The transportation of energy is obviously the biggest technical problem. I read, lightly, that the Eu would like to create an european energy network to potentiate the different national systems. Like that Energy produced in Spain could be swaped for energy produced in France. Portugal imports French electricity (from their nuclear plants) but obviously what we get is electricity produced in Spain and swapped for french energy used in Spain.

  • wouldn't southern europeans want to keep that energy? despite of what the eurosceptics say, when it suits us, we europeans work well together. Southern europe would provide energy and get jobs, investment and money for it. Northern europe would get energy from less volatile and politicly sensitive areas In the south it would be seen as tapping into an unused resource. I am sure Arizonans would not mind selling energy to Washingtonians.

  • @juscurious I'm in Portugal. I just took a look at my electric bill. 40% of my December 2011 electricity came from windmills. I was skeptic when they started building those things all over the country side a few years ago for the same reasons you pointed out, but I must say I am VERY impressed with the results. Apart from this the windmills created a little bit of an industry here, along with some jobs, reduced coal and natural gas imports (for the thermo-electric plants) and its clean energy.

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