Monday
Feb282011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Throwing the Booker at wind turbines
Christopher Booker is on a roll at the moment, with an excoriating article about wind turbines in the Mail.
What we are seeing, in short, is the price we are beginning to pay for the past two decades, during which our energy policy has become hopelessly skewed by the siren calls of the environmentalists, first in persuading our politicians to switch from coal and not to build any more nuclear power stations, and then to fall for the quixotic dream that we could gamble our country’s future on the 'free' and 'clean' power of wind and sun
Environmentalists - working every day to mar your present and ruin your future.
Reader Comments (18)
In my bleaker moments (indulge me; it's Monday) I wonder how much political and financial momentum now lies behind the renewables fantasy?
In other words, given a dawning realisation amongst our political masters that their predecessors have screwed up energy policy royally - how quickly can this be stopped?
And in the meantime, how much more money will be wasted subsidising wind and solar (and building more subsidy farms)?
Good for Booker and everyone else who has stood up to this wall of lying self-interest and stupid greenery, but good God there's work to be done yet.
Moon rocks are also free, it only cost the US $25 Billion to get them
AT LAST - Chris Booker is going for the jugular on this one - along exactly the same lines as I have been bleating on about for years to anyone who would care to listen. Which only goes to prove that we must both be right.
The 'capacity' figure which Chris mentions is such a con - I notice that the DECC, in their press releases about new (or refurbished) wind farms, now talk about the things providing power for 'UP TO 5000 homes', or whatever.
As he points out, governments elsewhere are abandoning the principle of wind energy in droves - but of course our coalition government is so sold on the idea that they are quite beyond seeing the wood for the trees. Also the 'saving CO2' argument is actually worse than Chris states - a study in The Netherlands has shown that, not only do they not SAVE any CO2, they actually INCREASE it, due to the inefficient way in which the backup generating capacity has to be managed, to take account of the erratic and occasional output from wind farms.
Wind may be 'free' - but in the UK it is NOT constant, and it NEVER blows when you need it. Chris mentions the cold snap before Chritmas last year - at that time, as we had a nice anticyclone sitting over the country, for several days the contribution from wind farms was 0.1% of demand. I dread to think what the economics of that situation were.
What he hasn't mentioned are reliabilty and maintenance - both of which are highly questionable - especially for offshore installations. Don't forget that there is no 'force majeur' for the owners to keep the things producing - because they get income, whether the turbines are generating or not. Moreover - there can be no more challenging environment to operate in than, say, a force ten gale in the North Sea - when the turbines will be shut down anyway - they actually operate in quite a small wind speed band. Unlike (say) oil rigs, there are no maintenance personnel stationed on them - and it could be months before repairs are carried out - bearing in mind the logistics of getting spares and equipment to these remote locations, in an appropriate weather window.
Even onshore, installation and maintenance are hardly benign operations. Figues published by the Health & Safety Executive for Caithness Wind Farms (clearly a group in Northern Scotland), show that since installation, there have been nearly a thousand accidents, and no less than 73 deaths.
Frankly, I can't see a single reason to continue with these eyesores.
Another excellent article from Christopher. We have to keep publicising the renewables nonsense.
David above, and the much admired Booker, miss a further critical point which is that because the wind and hence the output of these monstrosities, is variable and unpredictable, some (let's say 50% for the want of better) of the turbine output is when its not needed. At low demand time (eg nighttime) the power stations have to be kept running anyway (and their efficiency is getting worse and worse) so they need load. Thus the BENEFICIAL output of the wind turbines drops from about 20-25% of nameplate to a real 10-12.5%. Nonsense, as Booker says.
David above, and the much admired Booker, miss a further critical point which is that because the wind and hence the output of these monstrosities, is variable and unpredictable, some (let's say 50% for the want of better) of the turbine output is when its not needed. At low demand time (eg nighttime) the power stations have to be kept running anyway (and their efficiency is getting worse and worse) so they need load. Thus the BENEFICIAL output of the wind turbines drops from about 20-25% of nameplate to a real 10-12.5%. Nonsense, as Booker says.
In June 2008, National Grid published a document "Going Green" which looked ahead to a 2020/21 scenario assuming the the "Government climate change objectives" were met by 2020/2021:-
(http://www.nationalgrid.com/NR/rdonlyres/9A4B4080-3344-4C6D-8A19-411A867682F2/26834/GoneGreenfor2021.pdf):
Their vision is for a CAPACITY of 99GW made up of 35GW gas-fired, 20GW coal, 7GW nuclear, 29GW wind, 3GW other renewable and 6GW "other".
However, the projected DEMAND at 2020/2021 is 61GW, giving a margin of 38GW (99GW - 61GW).
Remember the current capacity is about 72GW for a demand of 60GW (during January 2011), that is, a margin of about 12GW.
So, if a margin of 12GW is acceptable just now, what reasoning is behind the anticipated EXCESS margin of 26GW in 2020 (ie 38GW - 12GW)?
The answer is found (heavily diguised) in a document issued by National Grid in 2006:
National Grid looking at wind (http://tinyurl.com/4gb45fy):-
"For example, for 8000MW of wind (e.g. in line with Government's 2010 target of 10% renewables), around 3000MW of conventional capacity (equivalent to some 37% of the wind capacity) can be retired without any increased probability that load reductions would be required due to generation shortages on cold days. However, as the amount of wind increases, the proportion of conventional capacity that can be displaced without eroding the level of security reduces. For example, for 25000MW of wind only 5000MW (i.e. 20% of the wind capacity) of conventional capacity can be retired. This implies that, for larger wind penetrations, the wind capacity that can be taken as firm is not proportional to the expected wind energy production. It follows that the electricity market will need to maintain in service a larger proportion of conventional generation capacity despite reduced load factors. Such plant is often referred to as "standby plant".
In other words, for 25GW connected wind NG would need 20GW of "standby plant", i.e. 80% (100% - 20%).
So, for 32GW connected (29 wind + 3 other renewable) NG need 80% of 32GW as "standby plant" which comes to 25.6GW say, 26GW.
So, in 2020/2021 on a day where the demand is 61GW and there is 32GW of wind and other renewable connected, NG will have to have 26GW of plant on "standby".
If this nightmare scenario comes to pass, it will be very expensive and the enormous cost will appear on electricity bills
Brownedoff - yes and that's assuming maximum demand is still 61GW in 2021 - but by then the plan is to have many thousands of electric cars on the road, each taking at least a 2KW charge for about 8-12 hours?
lapogus
You are correct of course, but inexplicably you missed the wonderful joke the energy fantasists added at this point to lighten things up.
Apparently, we are going to be able draw power back from all those charged and partially charged cars when they are plugged into the wall and the wind stops blowing.
So when we get a nice, long winter anticyclone, the national electric fleet will be used as backup. Thus we neatly avoid the nasty problem of spinning reserve and all that extra CO2 that the windmills were supposed to be avoiding.
I know, I know. Pure comedy gold.
Next time someone tells you that the greens have no sense of humour you can set them straight with this.
It does depend on whether you're correctly identifying 'capacity credits' from 'load capacity' - something our friends in Whitehall blur.
Load capacity refers to the efficiency of power production measured over a period of time. For UK wind, that's around 26%. However, at any one point, that production figure can range from zero to 100% depending on the wind strength.
Capacity credits in this case is how much of traditional energy does wind replace. The real answer is wind produces zero capacity credits as the intermittent supply of wind energy means that you have to have alternative production available to meet the Grid's needs when Wind doesn't produce energy.
Civil servants at DECC however (and this is in Hansard) claim that the energy produced by wind (load capacity 26%) can be represented as capacity credits. This is a clear misrepresentation. You can't use an time-period average production to offset the real capacity needs of the National Grid and current electricity planning certainly doesn't believe that.
A voice crying in the wilderness - but not on this blog.
The 'climate' debate will be decided by data and understanding over time but the urgency and frustration that so many of us feel is because the disastrous energy policies the 'warmists' agenda dictates is happening now. Chris. Booker is the only MSM journalist to consistently oppose and expose the scientific ignorance of our politicians and their advisors.
Perhaps Nurse ,Rees, Cox, Singh, King, Beddington etc. would like to make the case for 'wind', 'solar' and even 'tidal' energy and explain how they will in any way reduce the contribution of gas, coal and nuclear. To make it easier for them they do not have to even consider the costs!
BTW any chance of a post/discussion on the pros and cons of Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors or other nuclear reactors. You never know, perhaps a lost politician will read it.
@ DAVID ...............I notice that the DECC, in their press releases about new (or refurbished) wind farms, now talk about the things providing power for 'UP TO 5000 homes', or whatever..........
This 'HOMES' ploy has been used by the developers for many years and it attempts to exploit the 'MAXIMUM Capability' or 'Installed Capacity'.
We know from Industry figures that the 'Average Capability' is only about 25% of Installed Capacity.
Thus the claim to supply 5000 homes realistically means capability for ONLY 1250!
Just an addendum to my diatribe above - when I wrote a few weeks ago to our dear Department of Energy and Climate Change (why are they linked..? beats me...) on this very subject, apart from the proud boast that the UK had now overtaken Denmark in offshore wind capacity (which comforted me a great deal, I can tell you), the writer came out with this cracker: 'The wind is always blowing somewhere in the British Isles..'
Well - that's good to know. We can all sleep easy in our beds knowing that the government is basing our energy security on the assumption that, if the wind isn't blowing at PRECISELY the correct speed to activate the turbines off Margate, there's a jolly good chance that the ones in the Irish Sea are doing their stuff...
Keeping my language under control as far as possible, I responded to this by suggesting that this assumption was just a tad 'reckless'... Had no reply since..
As I write - nice anticyclone on the way. Proportion of demand being met by wind: 0.9%.
Not to worry. Its all under control.
Yes, we do enjoy that claim that wind is always blowing somewhere in the UK, Over those freezing windless days before Christmas I kept a daily, sometimes almost hourly check on the neta figures (http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm). Several times the contribution of wind was represented as 0.0 percent, although the output column might be showing 30 or 40 megawatts. So at least a very small amount of wind was blowing somewhere. But at the same time demand was showing at up to 60 gigawatts, while the figure for the French interconnector was more than once around 2GW or 2,000MW, its maximum capacity (i.e. we were getting up to 60 times as much from French nuclear reactors as was being supplied to the grid by turbines..
A good review of how poorly wind performed in the UK and Ireland can be found in the REF report at http://www.ref.org.uk/publications/217-low-wind-power-output-2010.
If I do not hide the decline in the UK winter load factor and instead I extrapolate the data, my computer model shows that the output of wind power in the winter of 2016 will be 0.0%. That is just when the old coal and nuclear power stations have closed.
The wind is always blowing somewhere in the UK, it is just an inconvenient truth that when the wind is blowing at less than about 4m/s all over the UK, all those wind turbines consume electricity rather than produce it, so the actual MW figure could be negative.
An excellent article. The point is often overlooked that wind turbines don't even reduce CO2 emissions when you look at the big picture, the CO2 cost of manufacture, installation, maintenance and the disruption they cause to the grid.
However, we have a political establishment fully signed up to the nonsense, even determined to lead the way. The vested interests and political inertia are huge and it will take years to sweep away the nonsense. There'll be all sorts of attempts to maintain it under other guises. We still have the Large Combustion Plant Directive, which is worsening our energy supply problem even though the problem of acid rain, all the rage in the 70s, was found to have little to do with SO2 emissions.
Philip Bratby,
"The wind is always blowing somewhere in the UK" is one of those statements along with "The wind is free", which the greenies and some of their fellow travellers in politics like to trot out and superficially it sounds pretty good. A couple of minutes thought shows it's utterly stupid.
There's a great reply (to the original article) from a Californian who has spotted that "it is just another business that will say anything to sell its product". He claims to come from 'Turbineville'...