Wind Turbines Again

Regular readers will know that I am passionately opposed to wind turbines and the corrupt Green vandalism that has foisted these useless excrescences on some of our most beautiful and lonely landscapes. Via Tory Aardvark, here's a video which makes the point from a different angle.

WARNING: Raptors were harmed in the making of this film.

Another Wind Energy Fail

According to this story in the Torygraph:

Wind farms operators were paid £900,000 by the National Grid to disconnect their turbines for one night because the electricity was not needed.

The payments, worth up to 20 times the value of the power they would have produced, raises serious concerns about such subsidies, which are paid for by the customer.

Last month, on a particularly windy night, six Scotttish wind farms were told to stop producing electricity as the National Grid was overloaded. Fair enough, you might think: if these things are producing an excess of power, then it's good to be able to regulate it.

Except that the wind farm owners need to be compensated for not producing power. Nearly a million pounds' worth of compensation. And who pays the compensation? Why, the people who didn't get the electricity that was so expensively not produced. The electricity customers.

OK, it's beyond a joke now. Can we stop?

The Tragedy of Wind Power

I watched the piece on the BBC News the other night about the launch of the 'wonderful' new wind farm off the coast at Thanet. Well, it's certainly better than siting those monstrosities on a lonely hillside and ruining the view for millions of us who like remote and unspoiled landscapes. But I'm still alarmed about the economics.

According to Christopher Booker in the Telegraph,

Over the coming years we will be giving the wind farm's Swedish owners a total of £1.2 billion in subsidies. That same sum, invested now in a single nuclear power station, could yield a staggering 13 times more electricity, with much greater reliability.

Wind farm enthusiasts tend to quote the manufacturers' figures for output unquestioningly, and this one is claimed to have the 'capacity' to power 200,000 homes. Well, that would be so if the winds at Thanet could be guaranteed to blow at exactly the right speed all the time, night and day, winter and summer. Too little wind, and the turbines don't turn fast enough. Too much, and they have to shut down for safety reasons. But just right, and they will produce what is claimed. Probably. The 'load factor' of British wind turbines (the amount they actually produce compared to the amount they could produce in ideal conditions) is around 25%. But this is never mentioned by government ministers wetting their pants over the latest project. Compared with investing the same money in nuclear, which could provide 13 times the power, reliably and whatever the weather conditions, the money is being pissed away.

So, not only do we have a hugely inefficient and unreliable source of energy (remember that each turbine needs 100% of idle, inefficient fossil-based backup for when the weather is calm), but we are paying massive amounts of subsidy to have it. Over the life of the project, the Swedish manufacturers will pocket an amazing £1.2bn in subsidy. And where does that come from? Your electricity bills and mine. Let's be clear: in a time of serious recession, our energy bills are being artificially inflated to support a technology that is unreliable and unsightly, and won't even solve the problem, if there is a problem. Remember that energy costs are a bigger proportion of expenditure for the poor than the rich, so the burden of all this environmental grandstanding falls on the least wealthy. And the money doesn't even stay within the British economy - it disappears to Sweden.

In a related story, James Delingpole has something on the Bilderberg Group which is more than a little alarming:

Bilderberg. Whether you believe it’s part of a sinister conspiracy which will lead inexorably to one world government or whether you think it’s just an innocent high-level talking shop, there’s one thing that can’t be denied: it knows which way the wind is blowing.

He has seen the 2010 agenda:

Which is what makes one particular item on the group’s discussion agenda so tremendously significant. See if you can spot the one I mean:

The 58th Bilderberg Meeting will be held in Sitges, Spain 3 – 6 June 2010. The Conference will deal mainly with Financial Reform, Security, Cyber Technology, Energy, Pakistan, Afghanistan, World Food Problem, Global Cooling, Social Networking, Medical Science, EU-US relations.

Yep, that’s right. Global Cooling.

Which means one of two things.

Either it was a printing error.

Or the global elite is perfectly well aware that global cooling represents a far more serious and imminent threat to the world than global warming, but is so far unwilling to admit it except behind closed doors.

Global Cooling. This is no surprise at all.

In the 70s, we had fears of a new Ice Age (all driven by 'unquestionable' scientific research). But then we had a few warmer years - the 80s were full of the nuclear winter hypothesis, which would at least have been unquestionably man-made - so in the 90s we had the emergence of Global Warming, on which we were repeatedly told the 'the science is settled'. But the weather refused to co-operate, and the climate record showed, to those not blinded by research grants and vested interests, that temperatures have been going up and down for millennia. 'Global Warming' became a little unsustainable in the public eye, so they started referring to 'Climate Change' and, more recently, 'Climate Chaos'.

Well, FFS! If you wanted a definition of a truly chaotic system, then the world's climate is about the best there is. Of course climate is chaotic. It couldn't be anything else. But the phrase 'Climate Chaos' has one great advantage: any significant climatic event - and there are always plenty of those - can be adduced as 'evidence' to the argument that 'the world's climate is getting chaotic - and it's all our fault'. Baking summer, freezing winters, massive flooding, widespread drought, all things which have happened since the beginning of recorded history and beyond, will go into the mix. Even tsunamis and earthquakes will provide supporting evidence for that in the eye of the unthinking public, although any fule kno that earthquakes and tsunamis have nothing whatsoever to do with the weather. Remember Danny Glover? People are easily fooled.

And the next big thing, if Delingpole is to be believed, will be Global Cooling. We are being prepared for yet another about-turn on the future of the planet. One thing you can be sure of - it will cost you.

And we will have raped all our lonely places for nothing.

I fucking despair; I really do.

Wind Farms - I'm Not A Big Fan*

*Not original, sadly.

There's a good post over at Not A Sheep on the latest misinformation on wind farms as a source of the nation's energy.

It seems that the majority of wind farms have a turbine efficiency of between 25 and 30%. Turbine efficiency is the amount of power that a wind turbine actually produces, compared to its theoretical maximum. Some are far worse than this - one at Chelker reservoir in Yorkshire runs at 8.7% efficiency, and one at Blyth Harbour in Northumberland boasts a magnificent 7.9%.

So when the Telegraph reports that "The Whitelee windfarm... turbines can generate 322MW of electricity, enough to power 180,000 homes", Not A Sheep correctly identifies the key word in the sentence as 'can'.

On these figures, they can power 180,000 homes, but probably do power about 45,000. Or possibly 14,000.

Why do the mainstream media give this inefficient, uneconomic, unreliable and unsightly technology such an easy ride?

Anyone notice?

It's the coldest winter for a decade. And, down here at least, there is no wind.

Good thing we have still got those old dirty power stations going, isn't it?

Imagine ...