Average sized wind turbin can power 10,000 homes, why not free or cheap electricity

Sounds

I've been reading a few reports on power generated by wind,
The average sized wind turbine can power around 10,000 homes,
So I'm interested to know why the city council or some group of
developers haven't set up turbines in or around the city, every city.
If they have it's not free.

The cost of electricity could be as cheap as one payment per year,
You're just switched over to the grid and you hae a yearly limit.
Or even free if we wanted, if everyone funded these projects.

I know it costs a lot to setup but there's an opportunity to supply
the whole country with free or cheaper power, why haven't we done it?

If someone has the funds to set up one or two turbines, that's a lot of homes
that could benifit for free or very cheap electricity, it's a no brainer right?

Are we too lazy or incapable of developing such a project, would the gov fund it?

If I had a system that could supply 10 or 20k homes in my city, I'd only charge 200 per year per home.
You's still make a few million per year to keep your whole infrastructure maintained.

Dose anyone actually think about these things?

Tell me how

Sounds wrote: »

I've been reading a few reports on power generated by wind,
The average sized wind turbine can power 10,000 homes,
So I'm curious to know why the city council or a group of
developers haven't set up turbines in or around the city,

The cost of electricity could be as cheap as one payment per year,
Or even free if we wanted.

I know it costs a lot to setup but there's an actual option to supply
the whole country with frewe or cheaper power, why haven't we done it?

If someoen has the funds to set up one or two turbines, that's a lot of homes
that could be supplied with free or very cheap electricity.

Are we too lazy or incapible of developing such a project, would the gov fund it?

If I had a system that could supply 10k homes, I'd only charge 250 per year per home.

The way it would have to work would be feeding it on to the national grid and then part of that effectively feeding the local area. This would be necessary to ensure consistentcy of supply.

The actual purchase of the land, the civil works project, grid interconnector and associated cabling and control system plus maintenance and management would be many times the cost of the actual turbine.

That is why they are usually located in groups to get as many in one go as possible.

Even if all the above was not a problem, you'd then likely have significant planning objections as many would dislike the idea of the sight of it, the sound, the fears of radiation (unfounded I'm pretty sure) and so on. There's a reason aside from the access to wind that many are located in rural sparsely populated areas.

All in all, probably a project outside the capability of your average local council albeit laudable in the intent.

duffman13

All of the above plus the planning permission would be objected by everyone within 5 miles of them. People tend to object to everything these days

MeTheMan

Have you read anywhere about the cost of putting up a turbine from start to finish. Can't imagine it's cheap.

Within 10 miles of me there is around 100 wind turbines on two mountains (planning gone in for more). Some are the smaller older ones (I'd guess 12 years old) the others are the bigger newer ones 5-8 years old. Going by those figures they could power 1million homes.
A quick Google shows there are 1.7 million regularly used home in Ireland. So over half the homes in Ireland could be powered by the windmills just near me.
I'd guestion that 10000 figure.

doolox

So you need a backup supply which is reliable and constant. In the future it may be possible to store power in each house in batteries to act as a backup for lights etc but you may not be able to power heavy users such as heaters, ovens or other heavy loads. Certainly lights, with LEDs now available at 4w equivalent to an old 50w bulb would be a great candidate for battery power. Trouble is most houses have a huge reliance on electricity for entertainment, washing, cooking etc and all of these are heavy users of electricity.

Peoples mindsets would need to be changed to do without heavy power using appliances when the wind is not blowing, like the way our ancestors lived not so long ago.

Total reliance on wind might be possible if we only use lighting by electricity and switched everything else to other energy forms such as gas for heating and cooking etc.

Sounds

I'm not saying I could pull it off but it seems that it's very possible and probably unlikely anyone will supply it free.
If the right people put their heads together, it could be done, supplying at low cost compared to regular costs of electricity.

Thanks for your feedback.