Cape region optimal for wind energy

[Derrick]

Cape region a hot-spot for wind farms

The Cape region of South Africa is a potential hot-spot for wind farms as the country explores alternatives to coal-based energy...

 

[froot]

It's all good and well that it's a good source of energy, but wind energy has a very high capital cost, and maintenance on the wind turbines are rather incredibly expensive.

 

[grok]

The Brits don't think wind is such a good idea anymore.

Read this: The true, tragic cost of British wind power

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/07/wind_power_how_much/

 

[Easter Bunny]

if it's as expensive as everyone says, then i don't think it's for us. you can probably double the cost at installation, because you have the budget, lets say R1billion. then it will take longer to build the wind farm and be over budget, so it goes to R1.6billion. now we also forgot to add in the i'll-award-the-tender-to-my-cousin factor, so that's an extra R600m ontop of the price.

and a few years down the line, the people will want heads to roll over this, they'll start an enquiry and call it "windgate", you know, because "watergate" was apparently about water (that's probably the part that will annoy me the most).

 

[Terencek]

The problem with wind power (and to a lesser extent, solar) is the so-called NIMBY attitude: "I'm absolutely a supporter of renewable energy, but Not In My Back Yard". I serve on a local conservation committee, for heaven's sake, and even THEY are against a very commendable local initiative to start a solar farm. So what hope is there at large?

Given the right circumstances wind farms ARE viable, though obviously it will be some time before they can match the cheap tariffs provided by dirty energy like coal. Denmark has the right idea, and I recently saw a similar initiative down on the coast near Cape Town: villages or towns club together to buy one or more turbines, then all benefit from the power AND they get a payback from selling the surplus power back to the utility. Works for them, could work for us if only there was more vision.