Wind energy, business and the future
About 4 miles off the coast of Skegness you’ll find the world’s biggest wind farm under construction. They’re 120 meters tall and a single one can power 2,500 homes.
The UK has the unique opportunity to take advantage of off shore wind turbines, as the UK has an extremely large coast line which is essential when building a wind turbine. In fact there are hundreds of miles of coast line. The government want to see around 7000 turbines in the coming years.
So why aren’t the government building turbines like crazy? Simple: the cost. Wind turbines are not only a niche, specialised and highly expensive, there’s an even bigger problem. There are only two firms that can/will make turbines in the UK and the price at which they charge is going up every two years, therefore, eventually making one won’t be worth the price in the long term.
When thinking in terms of costs I think the opportunity costs need to be factored in:
Less pollution in the atmosphere
Lower dependency on gas and power plants
Increased employment to build them
From these three points you can see that wind turbines would be highly beneficial. There are 60,776,238 people in the UK according to a 2007 count let’s assume there’s 4 people to a home, that’s 15.2 million homes. Each wind turbine powers 2500 homes so that means there needs to be 6,077 built. A grand task.
If this was to be built successfully there needs to be more competitiveness in the field and more people need to know about the benefits. If firms swapped over to turbines a single one could power their firm for life. . . . Well until it broke down and they couldn’t be bothered to repair it. . . . .
The point is there’s not only a gap in the market for turbine manufacturers, but also an opportunity for firms to build their own power source. Personally, I would suggest only large firms tried this since making one takes years, payback takes years (depending on the firm) and then maintenance can be costly.
Tags: Business News, Company Business, competitiveness, energy business, opportunity costs, power plants, power source, shore wind, Thinking Business, turbine manufacturers, wind farm, wind turbines