And just to add to what Moxi is saying, the lagoons don't have to compete against wind and solar, but more against RE + storage, or nuclear, gas etc, since they offer predictability and reliability, with a known(ish) generation on each cycle.
Having a known 4x 3.5hrs of RE generation each day, will help a lot with the overall RE package. It will also reduce the total necessary expenditure on short, medium and long duration energy storage.
Whether or not the economic pluses outweigh the cost, I'm not sure. But if it's at nuclear cost levels, then why wouldn't you. And fingers crossed there will be other local pluses, such as coastal protection from storms. My understanding is that there are a whole host of plans based on the Swansea scheme, including floating PV, and water side property. Perhaps not for the Cardiff scheme, as it's so much larger (10x?) and the lagoon wall won't be open to the public.
I don't want to suggest that £1.3bn isn't a significant amount of money, but it's about 1/20th of what the Gov are suggesting they invest in CCS. So it seems like an acceptable cost for a trial scheme to literally test the waters.
tidal lagoons rather than barrages ?
Re: tidal lagoons rather than barrages ?
8.7kWp PV [2.12kWp SSW + 4.61kWp ESE PV + 2.0kWp WNW PV]
Two BEV's.
Two small A2A heatpumps.
20kWh Battery storage.
Two BEV's.
Two small A2A heatpumps.
20kWh Battery storage.
Re: tidal lagoons rather than barrages ?
I did a bit more background reading and watching last night to refresh and update myself regards tidal generation via barrage and lagoon and thought those interested might find this quite an interesting watch,
Seemed a pretty balanced assessment and backed up AE Midlands concerns about the ecology - going so far as to highlight the impacts of the French tidal barrage and a complete change to the ecology of the estuary with an new alternative - it didn't go in to the relative merits or value of the past and new eco diversity etc so we cant draw any conclusions from that beyond the fact that it does cause change. I did note that sedimentation plays a large role and here I thought there was some scope for old school solutions to be applied, upstream sediment traps and estuarine suction dredging. This would allow valuable alluvial sediments washed from upland farmland to be recovered and returned back to farmland and maintain the estuarine environment.
The output, cost and construction period really was an eye opener - even if we allowed double the costs it still looks a cheaper option than nuclear and that's before we factor in decommissioning costs.
Like I said before many many apparent benefits with some negative effects of which there could be a significant opportunity to engineer in mitigation measures to minimise if not completely remove some of them.
Moxi
Seemed a pretty balanced assessment and backed up AE Midlands concerns about the ecology - going so far as to highlight the impacts of the French tidal barrage and a complete change to the ecology of the estuary with an new alternative - it didn't go in to the relative merits or value of the past and new eco diversity etc so we cant draw any conclusions from that beyond the fact that it does cause change. I did note that sedimentation plays a large role and here I thought there was some scope for old school solutions to be applied, upstream sediment traps and estuarine suction dredging. This would allow valuable alluvial sediments washed from upland farmland to be recovered and returned back to farmland and maintain the estuarine environment.
The output, cost and construction period really was an eye opener - even if we allowed double the costs it still looks a cheaper option than nuclear and that's before we factor in decommissioning costs.
Like I said before many many apparent benefits with some negative effects of which there could be a significant opportunity to engineer in mitigation measures to minimise if not completely remove some of them.
Moxi