Saturday
Mar102012
by 
Josh
Josh Wind Energy: to the nearest whole number - Josh 156
Mar 10, 2012 Josh Mark Lynas Matt Ridley Wind turbines 
I thought a handy illustration of a few facts about Wind Turbines and Wind Energy might be helpful.
(Higher res version for printing here)
Especially as there has been a bit of a Twitter storm over Matt Ridley's superb piece in The Spectator on Wind Energy, see at his blog here.
Mark Lynas claimed that the article had no facts in it. Mark then asked for references, which Matt duly provided (all in the blog article). Mark either didn't like the references or is still busy reading them. We are still waiting for an apology from Mark for his completely unfounded Tweet.
Could be any time soon...
Reader Comments (58)
And UFOs keep crashing into them
And if they go wrong - the manufacturer decides to go out of business and leaves a note saying not to put the brake on..
If you want to have a go at that Operation Noah brigade
Just email them this link
http://bible.cc/matthew/7-15.htm
http://www.yell.com/s/scrap+metal+merchants-uk.html
Theres a great place for wind turbines
Are articles like yogurts? Matt Ridley's creamy, delicious full fact offerings versus the Mark Lynas 100% fact free range.
Is there a recommended daily intake of trans-facts?
Gareth, what a great idea! Def a cartoon, if that's ok with you.
Josh,
this one rises even above your usually brilliant oeuvre.
The precious rare earths argument, while upsetting to greens, is not really true.
Rhoda, not neodymium?
Josh
The best line in Matt's piece was
I think that you missed a really great image on that one.
Great work Josh !
Gareth
'daily intake of trans-facts' !
Thats the pick of the week! pmsl
j ferguson, we can always mine the dead wind farms for neodymium in the very near future. We have not run out of anything yet.
Rhoda, very good. and we'll have these wonderful monoliths to locate them with.
As it is illegal to kill certain birds and bats in England, I am still waiting for someone but particularly the RSPB and or the BCT to press charges against wind turbine operators under The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.
A worldwide study carried out by Birmingham University into the effects of 'bird and bat strikes' from wind turbines was conclusive:
Wind Farms kill bats and birds.
Since when do articles in the popular have to have references? Let Mark Lynas do his own homework.
Billb
Matt kindly embedded links to the references, so I am really wondering what Mark is upset about. Perhaps, like some Climate Scientists™ we know, he is computer challenged and doesn't understand the red links.
I liked Matt Ridley's article but as usual he pushed the 'facts' beyond their tolerance for pain and as such, Mark Lynas has a point. Specifically (which everybody is shying away from), the relevant proportion for wind power is of electricity generation, not energy per se. Nobody is intending to put wind turbines on cars (are they?). So, 2% and growing is the relevant proportion.
Believe me, I'm not a big fan of wind power (at all), but it pains me to see arguments getting forced into 'hide the decline' territory just because people feel fanatical about issues. Doesn't anybody see the similarity with the Team and the Hockey Stick?
Anteros said:
Governments are pushing electric vehicles. Well, no, promoting. Pushing them might make you think they have run out of power.
If we are to become hair shirt wearing zero emission drivers that electricity will be going into vehicles in place of petrol and diesel. It will be (supposedly) replacing gas, oil and coal power stations. The windy future is not just one of wind powering our homes but also powering our travel to a larger degree than at present. As electricity is not the only form of energy we use I think Matt Ridley's comparison is a fair one.
Anteros, I don't think it's quite 'hide the decline' territory. There the data was removed, and the intent was to obscure the truth, in particular a fatal vulnerability of the analysis. In using the wider term of energy rather than the more specific grouping of electricity Matt was perhaps being hyperbolic but not deceptive. The fact he quoted is still a fact, and still correct.
Having said that, the strength of the case against wind farms is that it can be made in powerful ways without needing to broaden the envelope. But then again, the public respond well to that type of presentation. I think if I were presenting to, say, a planning committee, and realised the level of competence that they had, I might also be tempted towards the oratorical rather than unvarnished approach.
Anteros
You are totally wrong. We are told that the solution to the intermittency of wind is to use all that spare electricity at night or at times of low demand to charge up our electric cars. Similarly will be heating our houses with storage heaters to use up that surplus wind-produced electricity. Only that way can we be weaned off fossil fuels.
Vote for wind power, you know it makes sense. The greens have told us so and they know all about technology.
Don, that one gets its own cartoon ;-)
I agree with Gareth. Matt's emphasis on energy rather than electricity is correct, since the stated strategy is to use electricity to replace as much fossil fuel as possible. According to http://www.ieawind.org/annual_reports_PDF/2010.html (see Table 3), the wind share of electricity generation is 2.3% for 2010. This is not insignificant but it is hardly a game changer and the actual lifetime cost data has yet to be nailed down.
josh
Can hardly wait!
I think it's illegal to interfere with, hurt or kill any bat in the UK - and the penalties are severe:-
Penalties on conviction - the maximum fine is £5,000 per incident or per bat (some roosts contain several hundred bats), up to six months in prison, and forfeiture of items used to commit the offence, eg vehicles, plant, machinery.
There's even a form on the BCT website where you can report "bat crime" - and presumably get the offending windmill confiscated.
(It's a bit different in the US however where, if you find bats in your house, you can look in the Yellow Pages and call a "bat exterminator")
For those of you with a few spare bob to invest.
In the USA , the future of energy is not wind, solar or even petrol, but natural gas. Fracking works, perhaps too well because the abundance of Nat Gas has driven the price (in the USA) to about $2.50 per million BTUs. In the USA, gasoline (aka petrol) is between $3.50 and $4.35 per US gallon. The latter price is my price in California, yet I can buy Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) within 100 meters of a gasoline pump at $4.35 for $2.08 per Gasoline Gallon Equivalent (GGE) [GGE is the energy equivalent of 1 US gallon of unleaded gasoline or about 3.78 liters of petrol. The GGE is the equivalent of one US gallon of gasoline. The only difference is that the octane rating in about 128 -- meaning that with higher compression engines, the efficiency can be much higher.]
I know that petrol is about € 1.65 per liter in ROI or about ( times 3.78) € 6.24 per US Gallon or (*1.32) $8.23 per US gallon.
Now if CNG cost the same in Europe -- which it doesn't because the Greens are preventing the development of fracking in your gas deposits, wouldn't it be lovely if the price of CNG as GGE sold for half of that of petrol -- even with all the socialist taxes?
You boyos are being ripped of, much like the average US consumer.
IF you want to invest, look at CLNE, NAV, and any European truck producer that makes Nat Gas powered vehicles (I believe Volvo does, but they are now an Indian company)
I might add that almost NOBODY ever heard of the Honda Civic GX which is produced all over the world. This is a CNG car meant for fleet use -- it is actually produced by Honda in the USA. Look it up on Goggle.
Honda Civic GX
Wake up, my friends, you are being had.
I'm thinking of some future Obelix shouldering a turbine tower, the menhirs having been supplanted by objects of a more recent religion.
I would like an environmentalist to provide an explanation for welcoming a permanent turbine farm comprising multiple wind turbines at 150 up to 650 feet high in an area of outstanding natural beauty, while objecting to an exploration rig on location for only a few weeks, lets say for a shale gas evaluation well, leaving if successful a small wellhead completion half the height of a street lamp post.
A truly wonderful cartoon! It makes everything so clear that even David Cameron would be able to understand it. If only someone would show it to him!
I didn't know who Mark Lynas was so I googled him. First thing I find on his blog is "Can solar PV really power the UK?"
He is in Tucson, Arizona commenting on how it is idea for solar. I don't have to read very far before I read this.
Well solar delivers the most energy at noon. I don't know if noon is the "hottest part of the day" but that it is not relelvant. What is relevant is what is the time of the day where demand for electricity is the highest. Having looked at electricity demand curves for a number of places in the US I have never found noon to be included as part of the time of highest demand. At Tucson Electric Power you you can pick a plan to get discounts by shifting usage to off-peak.
Summer On-Peak (Weekdays) 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM
Summer On-Peak (Weekends & Holidays) 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM
Summer Shoulder (Weekdays) Noon to 2:00 PM, 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Summer Off-Peak (Weekdays only) Midnight to Noon, 8:00 PM to Midnight
Summer Off-Peak (Weekends & Holidays) Midnight to 2:00 PM, 6:00 PM to Midnight
Winter On-Peak (Weekdays) 6:00 AM to 10:00 AM, 5:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Winter On-Peak (Weekends & Holidays) 5:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Winter Off-Peak (Weekdays) Midnight to 6:00 AM, 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM, 9:00 PM to Midnight
Winter Off-Peak (Weekends & Holidays) Midnight to 5:00PM, 9:00 PM to Midnight
The reason is that the wind turbines, which do not save much CO2 and will inevitably cause more CO2 emissions in the future than without them, are nothing to do with 'saving the planet'.
They are a political statement; a demonstration of the power of the Fabian/Marxist EU State linked to the Marxist UN and Agenda 21. The evidence is all around, not least the 50 year EU carbon plan.
View them as a political demonstration similar to the Nazi Swastika, an ever-present symbol of Power, swastikas on sticks this time.
The other side of the coin is all the insiders getting rich by shafting the poor using the fake IPCC science as justification.
@Phillip Bratby Mar 10, 2012 at 8:37 PM
Indeed they have ... and they've also told the UN - or the UN might have told them ... it's all wrapped up in a hazy maze, really! And for Josh's take on this ... <shameless plug alert> don't miss:
Josh on the UN’s a-MAZE-ing place
I would like an environmentalist to provide an explanation for welcoming a permanent turbine farm comprising multiple wind turbines at 150 up to 650 feet high in an area of outstanding natural beauty, while objecting to an exploration rig on location for only a few weeks, lets say for a shale gas evaluation well, leaving if successful a small wellhead completion half the height of a street lamp post.
I quite like the look of the wind turbines. The two large farms in the North Island of New Zealand are not on sites of any particular natural beauty, and are far enough out of town to not annoy people. (They are even relatively cost effective here, because the chosen spots have quite a constant wind. I would object strongly to them if they had the sort of subsidies seen overseas.)
However, I also don't mind the look of nuclear power stations or coal plants or oil rigs.
I think your point is sound. If the environmentalists don't mind what is in effect industrialising the countryside for wind, why do they leap to attack any other industrialisation?
Personally I think the bleating here about the number of birds killed is a touch husterical. Like you actually care! However, again the Greens are inconsistent. A coal plant killing that much wild-life would never get the go-ahead.
Mark Lynas has already written about bird mortality due to windfarms.
Wandering off-topic, but in the Lynas column linked aboved, he mentions "the last great bustard in the Spanish province of Cadiz." Which brought to mind the wonderful limerick
Definition.....Wind Turbines.......White Elephants surrounded by Dead Birds.
No wind.....No power
Too much wind.....No power
Watermelon stupidity at its Best.
Anon, Foxgoose,
I believe the law was amended so as to make it "NOT" a crime for bats to be turned in to cat food by windmills.
Regards
Mailman
It is not correct refering to wind driven electricity generators as turbines. A turbine uses air on which work has been done, as in a jet engine where the air is compressed and then used for combustion before encountering the turbine. These things use ambient air.
Windmill is not accurate either but probably more appropriate.
Mailman - do you have a reference for that?
There's a classic Hickman article on bat & bird deaths at the Graun, headlined -
Wind myths: Turbines kill birds and bats
This imprints the desired message into the brains of the Graun's cognition-challenged activist base, then goes on to let Hickie of the hook by explaining that turbines do indeed kill lots of birds and bats - but fatalities can be minimised by careful siting.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/27/wind-energy-myths-turbines-bats
This is now a common technique in the newspaper-turned-propganda-rag once known as The Guardian - tell a whopping lie in boldface and then retract it all the boring small print copy you know your readership can't be bothered with.
Goebbels would have been proud
(Of course the reference to Josef Goebbels here is not intended, in any shape or form, to detract from the impeccable journalistic credentials of Mr Hickman by implying that he is prepared to depart from the strict truth in any of his literary endeavours.)
Ah, Mark Lynas.
He who contributed to a wonderful Radio 4 comedy about UK climate refugees being driven from their homes by some future "Coastal Relocation Authority" as the seas rise. You'll LOVE this:
http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/audio/getting-four-degrees
Correction: 'Twasn't a comedy. These warmists would have us take their neoapocalyptic nonsense at face value.
I've only just noticed the following letter published by the Telegraph a week or so ago. Notable because buried among the list of signatories - Prof James Lovelock.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/9111730/Concerns-about-the-Governments-support-for-on-shore-wind-turbines.html
Thanks Pharos. On a whole range of things - biofuels, carbon trading, wind subsidies - Lovelock is a staunch ally of Nigel Lawson, about whom he said in the Guardian in Mar 10:
With enemies like this ... well, forget the cliche, we need enemies like this! Especially when you consider that Lovelock was chosen, as a much younger gun, to be at "The Atmosphere: Endangered and Endangering," that seminal meeting convened by Margaret Mead in North Carolina in 1975 with Woodwell, Holdren and Schneider, that kicked off so much that we have come to know and love today. (The best report I know on the subject being published by a strange US conspiracist group - note that Lovelock even then had the independence of mind to laugh out loud at some of the more outlandish views expressed.)
Andy, many thanks for linking to Mark Lynas' thoughtful article, which I had not read and makes all the stranger that he reacted so badly to Matt Ridley's piece.
His quote from the Wind Energy Association "Wind power is far less harmful to birds than the fossil fuels it displaces." made me wonder. Since wind gives us about zero amount of energy just how much fossil fuel do they think it replaces? And I think the eagles would just rather be alive.
I read somewhere about wind turbines increasing carbon emissions too. More to cartoon!
Josh: http://www.clepair.net/windSchiphol.html
Then read the Irish report and the Denmark report in its references. The Danes have consistently lied about the contribution of wind energy to their grid; they limit it to <10% and store the rest to hydro claiming it's wind energy.
The Irish report shows that by ~13% penetration, CO2 saving is just 4% not correcting for the CO2 cost of the windmills. The Dutch report does that correction and shows that most windmill experiments generate more Co2 than they save.
It's the biggest scam since the IPCC.
Foxgoose,
Sorry, it's just a recollection of mine but I'm sure I saw it mentioned here in an article quite a while ago.
I'll have a dig around to see what I can find BUT the simple fact that birds are turned in to cat food quite efficiently AND not one windmill executive has been imprisoned for the killing of endangered bird species should be a good clue about where the law lies.
Regards
Mailman
Well we can forget a new broom after Huhne.
Ed Davey on the Marr show this morning:
I am not prepared to put the economy at risk.........
It is important to have a mixed portfolio and this is why it must include on and offshore wind.
Many windfarms have been put up to the benefit of the local community.........
In 3 to 4 years windfarms will be completely competitive..........
These new technologies can power Britain into the coming decades creating many new jobs...........
Modern windfarms ARE efficient and increasingly competitive........
So, no change there then.
mydogsgotnonose
Thank you for the pointer to the Dutch report above. Very interesting reading, but even that report grosses over many issues that have yet to arise in their full horror. And the most obvious is the cost to control the grid when the windmills are pumping in energy. He does look at the cycling issues, but they are just part of the overall issue. One such would be the cost to rewrite the state estimation programs and generator dispatch algorithms.
Still it is very refreshing to have someone make a solid and honest attempt to look at the real costs of these wind mills and the simplistic thinking that went into building them.
I hope additional papers are forthcoming. It is an excellent start, but not complete yet.
Mailman You do raise an interesting issue. Why is there selective enforcement? Looking through the Google results on bird mortality, I find the repeated statement that 80% of birds are killed by cats. While that may be true of song birds living in your back yard, I seriously doubt any eagles, owls, or other raptors, which make up the largest part of the endangered species list of birds are taken by cats. In deed we have a Great Horn Owl in my neighborhood (I live in the Sierra foothills) who regularly takes cats and small dogs -- so it is at two way predatory street.
And as for what kills the raptors? Why, those are mixed in with the songbirds for some reason.
On the electricity vs energy distinction, I disagree that it's "misleading" or "specious" to use total energy as the denominator. I think it's misleading -- but I'd not say specious -- to use electricity. Remember that Europe has agreed a binding EU-wide target to source 20% of ENERGY needs from renewables, including wind by 2020. In November BBC Panorama claimed that Tony Blair had agreed this target by mistake, confusing a target for electricity with one for energy.
Hi Don Pablo: the Texas and Colorado experience is the same. I have told people with influence that the ONLY way we can get the same ~5% CO2 saving of the Danes is by pump storage in Norway, hideously expensive.
The Germans are intending to do the same now the Poles, having had their grid pole-axed, potentially wrecking key components, to cope with German wind surges with less nuclear base-load have installed phase switches on the grid, a quick turn off technique: energy protectionism.
You might also wish to learn that the German grid can be wrecked just by a cloud passing the sun! It's because the Pv systems have a flaw: when excess power raises LV grid frequency above 50.2 Hz, a narural response, the PV systems switch off autonomously potentially destroying the system.
So, they're having to install a central master control, soft shut down to EVERY PV INSTALLATION.
The politicians have completely failed to get competent engineering advice so the number of experienced engineers like me is so small they are wrecking economies through ignorance.
The NGC is now so worried it is repeatedly warning of the disaster to hit us.
Well - the moral from this is obvious. Anybody who has a "subsidy extraction fan" nearby should walk the dog around there and keep an eye out for dead or injured bats. Once found, all you need to do is fill in the form on the BCT website, notify Plod - and wait for the windmill to be officially confiscated and its operators to face six months porridge.
All the signs point sooner or later to the coming end of the era of reliable electricity supply. We have in grown too used to a constant supply in the UK for as long as anyone can remember, apart from the war and the odd natural disaster such as the hurricane, and have grown to rely on it too much. So unlike those more resilient and resourceful souls abroad, we have grown compacent and not made prudent contingency plans. In many of our homes, a power cut will disable the whole shebang- boilers (because pumps etc usually depend on electric pump power, unless with great foresight you have installed traditional gravity circulation wide bore plumbing), cooking, lighting, white goods, computers TV's. Even worse if its a city flat where power cuts disable lifts and security doors etc. Take somewhere like Vietnam. Everywhere there's a generator in the hallway ready to be fired up. And they don't even know what it's like to feel cold.
Everyones situation is different, but it behoves us to prepare as best we can, for ourselves certainly, but even more critically for our elderly.