We could keep dividing by different 'classes' of information, but it is pretty cheap really, a fraction of what it costs to collect council tax from a non-payer.

Another way of looking at it, would be the lost income from not doing it.

So say all those application amounted to 50 MW of capacity, if they can yield of 130,000 MWh/ year at a price of Ă‚ÂŁ120/MWh, then the county would loose Ă‚ÂŁ15.6m a year, every year. Or a shade under Ă‚ÂŁ28/person.year in Cornwall.

Punch your ow numbers in and see what comes out

Yes and no. It is all part of the counties income, one way or another.
The developer may well be within the county too.

They have to support the Wave Hub, I think a couple of trials are going on at the moment. Not seen any results.
The coast around here is too deep for off shore turbines, why the North Sea is so popular. I think drilling into granite is pretty tricky too. Was involved in some floating platform research a while back, that has the same problem as wave power, it is a bit rough out there.
Geothermal is like Fusion, 20 years away, and always will be. Why not just mine the uranium out, be quicker, cheaper and easier.

Coal is still popular down here, now there is a 'heritage' that will not die.

Tidal Lagoon is a possibility for Mounts Bay, there is talk of building an artificial reef to save the coastline, why not just make a lagoon and generate some power.

Posted By: SteamyTeaYes and no. It is all part of the counties income, one way or another.
The developer may well be within the county too.

This not being the case is one of our real issues. The number of local developers here is infinitesimal. The only local 'income' is from community funds which is maybe 1% of what the developers are getting. In Wales the local authority does not get to keep business rates unlike England. Here they all go to Cardiff for 'redistribution'.

Doesn't look like there is much available hydro electric resource in Cornwall, maybe 20-30MW spread out over 322 sites.

http://www.cornwall.gov.uk/media/3625791/d2-2-1430-planning-for-hydro-power-in-cornwall-peter-rugg-cornwall-council.pdf

Topology in Cornwall is not great for hydro. We have high ground, but that tends to be granite that drains very fast. We also don't have any large rivers or natural lakes, The Loe being the largest and I can walk around that in a couple of hours, but it is only a few metres above sea level, and not very deep. We have a lot of rain, but that is very quickly washed out to sea.
Then there is the land rights issue. Cornwall is very fragmented, a few hundred meters of river run can pass though half a dozen different land owners.
Then there is the EA rules that say that there must be a minimum flow and only a small percentage can be used.

If Cornwall had a good hydro resource, we would not have improved steam engines beyond recognition.

Plausibility check time. Wikipedia on Cornwall:

Area: 3563 km²
Population: 536 kpeeps
Highest point: 420 m (Brown Willy on Bodmin Moor).
Precipitation: 742 mm/year.

Suppose all the rainfall on Cornwall fell on the top of Brown Willy and that all of it could be used for 100% efficient hydro generation. The power available, in MW, would be:

>>> 3563e6 * .742 * 1000 * 420 * 9.81 / (365.2425 * 86400) / 1e6
345.1778951655407

Of course this ignores water flowing in from Devon (haven't looked at which way rivers flow near the border) but given the other unrealistically optimistic assumptions I think we can ignore that.

A population of 536000 people using 302 MW average electricity seems reasonable; that's 563 W each which is probably slightly lower than the UK average but there's less heavy industry down that way but also more visitors not counting in the population I expect.

So, no, in the real world I don't think it's even slightly plausible that Cornwall could generate anything close to its actual current electrical consumption from hydro. A tenth might well be reasonable with a lot of effort.

Or 2.64552 TWh I assume.

That would be about 120 7.5 MW turbines if they had a capacity factor of 0.35


There is this live document on the council site, shame they use ktoe instead of MWh, but the council likes to confuse.
https://www.cornwall.gov.uk/media/3639892/E3-Comparing-Energy-Consumption-with-Supply.pdf

1 ktoe is 11630 MWh

Posted By: SteamyTeaOr 2.64552 TWh I assume.

That would be about 120 7.5 MW turbines if they had a capacity factor of 0.35


There is this live document on the council site, shame they use ktoe instead of MWh, but the council likes to confuse.
https://www.cornwall.gov.uk/media/3639892/E3-Comparing-Energy-Consumption-with-Supply.pdf" rel="nofollow" >https://www.cornwall.gov.uk/media/3639892/E3-Comparing-Energy-Consumption-with-Supply.pdf

1 ktoe is 11630 MWh

Cannot get my head round the figures this report suggests consumers in Cornwall use more leccy but Ed is suggesting you use less. Something seems wrong somewhere.

Posted By: owlman

Posted By: SteamyTea
I like the idea of floating PV, there is a project about it happening at the moment. Lots of engineering challenges though.

Keeping the little blighters still long enough might be one. and stopping the barnacles from eventually sinking them may be another.http:///newforum/extensions/Vanillacons/smilies/standard/wink.gif" alt="" title="" >http:///newforum/extensions/Vanillacons/smilies/standard/bigsmile.gif" alt="" title="" >

Would have thought you could combine the floating mussel cages with floating solar

Posted By: renewablejohn: “Cannot get my head round the figures this report suggests consumers in Cornwall use more leccy but Ed is suggesting you use less. Something seems wrong somewhere.”

Numbers are too close to worry about, much.

Mikel: 302 MW for 2013. With population 536e3 people that's 536 W/peep.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_Kingdom “In 2012, total electricity consumed was 317.5 TWh” with 62e6 people would be:

>>> 317.5e12 / (366 * 24) / 62e6
582.9881309125095

I.e., 583 W/peep.

From the paper Steamy references “Electricity 247 ktoe” which, at 11.63 MWh per toe and the same Cornish population as above would be

>>> 247e3 * 11.63e6 / (365.2425 * 24) / 536e3
611.39140604363

611 W/peep.

There's enough room for variation in estimates from things like use of different periods, different ideas of the amount of self-consumed PV and so on that these are reasonably consistent.

Posted By: owlmanKeeping the little blighters still long enough might be one. and stopping the barnacles from eventually sinking them may be another.

On inland water waves are less of an issue. Float the PV on reservoirs & you cut down evaporation too, so more water available. There was an example quoted on the Navitron forum recently.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/29/first-floating-solar-farm-built-in-uk

It don't every rain in Newquay, you show me a hotel website that has a wet picture in it

Hyrdopower is not all about rainfall. It is affected by catchment area, storage and height. Britain as a whole is never going to benefit from hydro power much.
If you think of the problems of fitting a wind turbine up a hill, just imagine how hard it will be to flood the valley below.

It would be ironic if they built these at Hayle. The Wave Hub office would make a nice cafe

Posted By: MikelLooking at the feasibility study for two tidal lagoons on the Hayle estuary quoted above by RJ, the Optimal Annual Energy Production figure is given as 2.9 GWh per lagoon.

This works out as 0.66 MW average annual power production, i.e. about 0.2% of 2013 average annual power consumption.

I must be reading a different report as I can see the figure of 3.41 GWh per lagoon per tide as a minimum output so with 2 tides per day minimum total output would be 13.64. The actual figures would be higher than this due to the actual river flows increasing the tidal height whilst impounded.