Can someone help me with this sceince question?

Question

A small island has to generate its own electricyt from coal. A 200 000 kW coal- burning power station provides all the elctrical power fro the island. The coal is brough to the island from the mainland. The islanders who want to replace the power station with wind turbines have been given the foloowing information;

Maximum oputput from one turbine: 800kW

Maximum number of turbines on one square kilometre of land: 6

Average yearly output as a percentage of the maximum: 25%

percentage of the land suitable for a wind turbine: 20%

Reduced carbon dioxide emissions per year (in tonnes): 200 000

WOuld you recomment that the islanders replace the coal power station with wind turbines? Explain your reasons for your recommendation. To gain full marks you must support your explanation with relevant claculations.

It's a 12 mark question and requires a long answer I dont want you to tell me the answer but just how to go about working it out when they havent told me how big the island is

Answer 1

Unless you know the area of the island it's impossible to say if there is enough space on the island for the wind turbines.

But even if there is, I'm not sure they should switch entirely to wind- doing so would be expensive and would mean they had to find some way of producing electicity for when the wind wasn't blowing (especially given the island is small, so their will be times when the whole island has low wind speeds).  So they would either need a back-up power station or a way of storing the energy, both of which would be expensive.

A more sensible idea would be to develop a range of renewable sources (tidal, wind, wave, hydroelectric) and perhaps replace the coal plant with a gas plant, which would be cleaner and would be able to provide extra energy for when the renwables were operating at low power.

Answer 2

Ofcourse the ppl of that island must use wind power, but i dont think wind power can power the whole island, so for the rest power they must rely on coal itself...

Answer 3

Yes the islanders should replace the coal power station because the optimal output ratio equates to 2.62 an emissions are cut, which supporting the Kyoto treaty article 1.5 section 2 which says emissions should be cut.

Answer 4

Hi,

I think that you'd have to answer it by saying that it is only possible if the island is greater than a certain size.  It would have made it a whole lot simpler if they'd given you the islands size so you could give a definite yes or no!  I think it's something worth checking out with your teacher though.

So I'd just calculate the min. area required for the turbines, and then the min. size of the island (using the 20% that's suitable for the turbines).

Other than that I guess that you could recommend a mixture of wind and coal (and calculate the saving in CO2 emissions per yr if they say could use wind turbines for 50% of their power).  Or for them to investigate other renewable forms of energy.

Hope this helps!

Answer 5

They will only be able to achieve an output of 200,000 kW if the island area is at least 833.3 square kilometers. (200,000/(200*25%)/6*5)

For comparison, Jamaica's area is 10,991 km², so it's not much.

Even then they would need to spend much money and space, but in the end the investment would pay out greatly both in cost and in reduced pollution.