Wind won't solve energy gap

Wind won't solve energy gap :: Sam Talbot-Rice, Telegraph blogs

Every household in Britain is facing a £4,000 bill for something that they don't want, that won't work and that will scar the landscape.

But there is little outcry. Why? Because it is dressed up in green clothing. The Government is planning a massive expansion in the number of wind turbines in Britain, now in vogue with policy-makers seeking to fill Britain's energy gap.

But is wind the right option? A new report out today by the Centre for Policy Studies (Wind Chill: why wind will not fill the UK's energy gap) argues that this reliance on wind power is a mistake. The report's author Tony Lodge shows that far from filling the energy gap, wind power is unreliable, expensive and impractical.

The Windy Denmark Question

The Windy Denmark Question | OpenMarket.org

Wind Power Whips Through Texas

Planet Gore on National Review Online

Get On Line: Wind Power’s Real Hurdle

Here.

Wind Facts

Here.

Overblown: The Real Cost of Wind Power

Here.

Birdies Bye Bye: Joint Press Release by Prof David Bellamy and Mark Duchamp

Here.

Excerpt:

In short : if someone wanted to set about exterminating the world's migrating birds, placing windfarms in migration hotspots would be looked upon as best practice.

Wind energy group spent $816K lobbying

Here.

Update: A related post from Coyote Blog is here, entitled "Our Technology Is Not Economic -- Do We Invest in R&D, or Lobbying?".

FPL backs off on state beach wind-farm project

Here.

Excerpt:

MIAMI - Bowing to unexpected public opposition, Florida Power & Light is abandoning plans to use a state-owned beach on Hutchinson Island for Florida's first industrial wind farm.
...
The largest producer of wind energy in the nation, FPL had planned to erect nine turbines -- each 400 feet tall -- that it said would generate energy capable of powering more than 3,000 homes. It wanted to put six of the 2.3 megawatt turbines on a popular surf spot it owns south of the plant, and the other three just to the north at Blind Creek, a 400-acre river-to-ocean parcel that the county and state helped buy in 1998 for $13 million.

No Breeze: The Day the Wind Died in Texas

Here.

What Really Happens When There is No Wind

Here.

Excerpt:

What happened in Texas is going to become routine wherever wind or solar power is part of the grid. America is headed toward being a Third World nation that cannot keep the lights on.

Global warming to take a cold shower in New York next week

Here.

Excerpt:

“Nowhere in the world is wind or solar energy contributing significant base load energy for the simple reason that it is impossible. Neither can supply energy continuously and both supply ZERO power for significant parts of their operating cycle. Both must be supplemented by conventional power sources (such as gas or hydro) ready to start up instantly the wind drops or a cloud passes in front of the sun. Such backup power needs to be the same capacity as the solar/wind facility, thus doubling total generating capacity and making this option an expensive, unstable and wasteful exercise.

“Wind power is useful for pumping water to storage ponds for other use, and solar is useful for heating and storing domestic hot water. Beyond these applications, they will never survive without costly subsidies or mandated shares. No one runs a big city or a steel works solely on solar or wind.”

ASTONISHING COST OF WIND FARMS

Here.

The great wind scam's profitability is equalled only by its futility

From Christopher Booker here:

The paper fell for the oldest trick in the wind propaganda book by referring to turbines' "capacity" rather than the mere 27 per cent of that figure which, with the fickleness of the wind, they actually produce. Thus the FT overstated the contribution of wind to our electricity needs by 300 per cent.

Interestingly, a victim (or perpetrator) of the same confusion is the industry's chief lobby group, the British Wind Energy Association (BWEA), which accuses me of misleading my readers by suggesting that, to meet our EU target, we need to build 20,000 turbines by 2020. To obtain "38 per cent of our electricity" from wind, the BWEA claims, we need no more than 8,500 turbines.

Let me remind them of the maths. According to the latest Government figures, our average annual electricity demand is 46 gigawatts (GW), ie 46,000 megawatts (MW): 38 per cent of this is 17.5GW. Let us generously say that the installed capacity of the average new turbine, onshore or off, is 3MW. But they produce only 27 per cent of capacity, so to generate 17.5GW would require capacity of 65GW. This needs over 21,500 turbines - more than I suggested.

Since this would require us to build more than two giant turbines a day - remember that offshore turbines can be almost the height of the Eiffel Tower - at a cost of far more than £100 billion, even the BWEA must know that there is no way this could be done.

Wonder Wind Power, Activate!

Here.

Excerpts:

...even with the record-setting 2007—wind made up about one-third of new power added in the U.S. last year, —it still accounts for just under 1% of America’s electricity generation.

That’s not going to grow too fast, no matter how many wind farms spring up. Wind power, unlike nuclear, coal- or gas-fired plants, doesn’t work overtime. GWEC figures wind power’s capacity in 2005 was about 24%–that is, wind turbines spin 1 hour out of 4, year-round.

That will improve, but slowly. Bigger and taller turbines, in more favorable locations—especially offshore—will make wind turbines more efficient. But it will be a long time before wind power’s paper strength starts to be reflected in real electricity generation. GWEC’s own figures point to wind power creeping toward 30% efficiency over the next twenty years.

"Tilting at windmills"

Here.

Excerpt:

Asked whether having a wind installation every half-mile around the coast was acceptable, Mr Hutton replied: "It is going to change our coastline, yes for sure. There's no way of making the shift to low carbon technology without making a change and that change being visible to people."

The worst of it though is that this madcap idea simply cannot work. With an average load factor of around 35 percent, alternative generation capacity will have to be built for the two-thirds of the time when the wind farms are producing no electricity at all – at ruinous cost.

But an even bigger problem is that, when highly variable wind power approaches ten percent of total production, it risks destabilising the grid, precipitating total collapse of the system.

Hat tip: Climate Science