By Steven Goddard
In Wednesday’s Guardian, their lead environmental story made this bold claim about The Whitelee Wind Farm:
Europe’s largest onshore wind farm, which is already powerful enough to meet Glasgow’s electricity needs
There was no discussion in the article about how Glasgow would handle extended periods of cold and calm winds, such as was often seen this past winter.
If the wind isn’t blowing, the turbines aren’t spinning and no electricity is being generated. This tends to happen on the coldest days, when the electricity is needed the most.
The flaw in The Guardian’s logic is a failure to acknowledge that Glasgow needs a consistent power supply 24x7x365. The fact that Whitelee has a lot of windy days and a high annual energy potential, does no good on the cold, calm days. I’m going to try to help The Guardian out with their logic using a few analogies they should understand.
- On average, there is lots of ice in the Arctic during the year – but that doesn’t stop The Guardian from being concerned about the possibility of a few ice-free days.
- Penguin chicks may get plenty to eat most of the year, but during the times when they don’t, many of them starve to death.
- Getting a pay check nine months a year would not pay the bills for the other three.
- Having toilets available only five days a week would not be satisfactory to most people.
- Having only five days a week without being in an automobile crash would not be satisfactory to most people.
- The rainy season in Australia may produce floods, but that doesn’t stop animals from dying of dehydration during the dry season.
- Having your watch functional 90% of the time would not be adequate.
- The fact that a restaurant is not responsible for food poisoning on most nights, may not make you want to eat there.
- Being careful on the edge of the Grand Canyon 90% of the time may not be enough.
- Practicing safe sex 90% of the time is not recommended.
It would be disastrous for Glasgow if they did not have the ability to obtain 100% of their energy from conventional sources on any given day of the year, when the wind isn’t blowing. If The Guardian is attempting to propose that Glasgow could cut off their supply of conventional electricity sources, they should just come out and say that. The implication is both clear and incorrect. “already powerful enough to meet Glasgow’s electricity needs”
Is The Guardian part of the Climate Industrial Complex?
And probably wouldn’t on frog or cat/dog days either 😉
I think it was Bismarck who said something to the effect of “only a fool learns from his own mistakes. I learn from the mistakes of others.”
Anyone believe that American policy makers will learn from the mistakes of the Europeans?
I lay a million dollar bet on the table that the only windfarms that will exist a century from now will be privately owned by small scale farmers for their own personal use.
Our power will come from fusion within 5 decades and expand worldwide from that point. All this solar panel and windfarm crap we’re seeing now is politicians gifting their friends with lots of taxpayer’s money. It will all be knocked down and scrapped for being inefficient junk.
Please make mention often that the Guardian is a loss making publication. Its parent company owns AutoTrader which does turn a profit. Thus traditional gas guzzling cars (and the food, cars, travel and technology sections of the Guardian) subsidise the newspaper’s environmental columnists.
This bit of wishfull thinking shows how much people want this whole alternative energy thing to work. What will we be told next? That the flex-capacitor really does exist?
John Boy (09:24:51) :
A devastating attack on a straw man, Goddard.
The more sustainable our energy sources the better. Better for our planet, our environment, and our and our children’s futures.
Strawmen don’t have a home at WWUT.
Goring each other’s strawman, er, bull? Do you honestly believe that the warmist crowd is simply setting a goal of “more sustainable energy sources”? Is that why they seek to shut down fossil fuel use by either making it illegal or excessively expensive? Is that why they distort scientific findings in order to frighten the public into accepting these actions?
You seem a bit too intelligent to excuse this disingenuous argument. You have to know that if the primary goal was presented as you say – making energy production more sustainable – the political and economic momentum required to make significant advances in the short term would never be realized.
For Alan the Brit ,,, Err .. Sorry but I posted that link a few days ago in the comments on the “Cap-andTrade” article.
First!!
I think it’s cute how John Boy sets up a straw man in order to complain about a straw man.
As is being done elsewhere, Glasgow should just charge a voluntary premium for “green power” from those who have feel strongly about environmental matters, like John Boy/The Boy of John.
Through the 15% to 25% green power premium, you cover the extra cost associated with the wind power and you also alleviate the guilt feelings of a large proportion of the population.
We need more win-win situations for the green movement – voluntary taxes are the way to go until we develop some new physics that will provide for new cheap energy sources – notice I did not say new technology.
Oil and coal will eventually run out.
not for another 100 years or so. by then we will have fusion, or positron gravitators, or some other as yet un-thought-up technology. This is what the market does. We didn’t leave the stone age because we ran out of stones.
Sun and wind will not, not in any time frame that will matter.
Irrelevant. The relevant issue is cost. Today. Wind and sun are intermittent. Why would you build two power plants: one that is only available but 10% of the time and another that is available 100% of the time, but is only used when the first one is unavailable?
You have one expensive boondoggle that CAN NOT be used 90% of the time. You have one fine plant that is being underutilized. It makes economic sense to fully utilize the 2nd, and thereby eliminate the need for the 1st.
To have both is a waste of finite resources. And money.
And somebody has to pay for all this.
Oil should last for several more decades, coal, several more centuries.
Whereas the sun runs out everyday at sundown.
It’s on the Beeb as well
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/8057198.stm
140 windmills on 55 square kilometres
Love it or hate it US cap and trade law may still have unintended consequences, whether the wind is blowing at 20 knots or not:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=al.muj4SD7u4&refer=news
There is of course on big error in that report. It says Obama is reversing 8 years of Bush policy on climate change, including not signing on to Kyoto.
It was Clinton, not Bush, who refused to sign Kyoto.
What are they teaching in journalism school these days?
Ok, ok, don’t all shout at once…
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=al.muj4SD7u4&refer=news
Steve in SC (09:05:01) : “Currently, the only way to do that reliably is the pump/storage reservoir. There is a distinct shortage of those on the great flatland.”
A few days ago I supplied this link to such a solution, which because of the scale issue doesn’t seem to me to be a true solution.
An actual example can be seen using Wikipedia and Google Earth. Of interest is the “pumped storage” associated with Kinzua (kin-zoo) Dam in northern Pennsylvania. Read about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinzua_Dam
Use these coordinates [ 41.839736 n, 79.002619 w ] to get a better look. Zoom out until you can see the entire reservoir and compare it to the small circular storage basin on the ridge-top to the south. Can you scale this up to be really helpful? In whose back yard?
As already stated, the biggest problem is that people are clueless about where their energy comes from and how much energy we actually consume.
From an environmental standpoint, windmills can and do work with a few hurdles to overcome. If a wind farm can produce, overall, 10% of the energy requirements of any load, that’s a potential 10% less energy being generated by coal/oil. In and of itself this is a good thing, but not for reasons even remotely related to global warming.
But, as we all know (and stated repeatedly), there are technical issues, as well as fiscal issues. Articles like the above are simply a bait-and-switch strategy.
…not to mention di-lithium crystals!
“Suppose you could buy a car that didn’t need gasoline, or other fuel.
Would you pay $100K for a wind-powered car just so you could save on gasoline? Oh yes, the car goes faster and slower depending upon the wind speed and doesn’t run when the wind doesn’t blow. So you also buy conventional car for those days. And the wind-powered car also needs twice as much maintenance as a normal car and needs expensive overhauls every 15,000 miles or so.
Who in their right mind would buy this car? But that’s what we are planning to do with electricity.”
Actually if hydrogen fuelled cars become common, the easiest filling station will be a turbine hydrolysizing into a gasometer. The gasometer acts as a capacitor to even the flow. Although there is an energy loss in hydrolysis, I suspect that ease of pipeline transport and storage in existing gas facilities, makes it an on demand power source.
However I would suggest they answer the question “How do you get a hydrogen filling station infrastructure in place quickly?”.
Hydrogen powered farm equipment from a free filling station may work too?
Could the people who say that wind turbines don’t produce energy unless the wind blows at x mph or more provide a link? thanks.
By the way, I live in a place where wind turbines were built about 11 years ago, and they are still working, as far as I know, they have already generated enough power to cover its building costs (As I read it in the local newspaper some years ago), the extra power they are generating is almost gratis, and most important, we haven’t suffered any power outages due to not enough power being generated.
I don’t know how much power they produce, how much does it cost to build one, how percentage is being subsidised by the local/central government or anything. I am only saying that almost every time I gaze at the blades they are spinning and we don’t suffer from power shortages.
I guess we have back up power generators, or we may buy nuclear power from France. I don’t know how much does it cost to build a nuclear or a coal power station.
Some people here seem to believe that coal power stations don’t cost anything to build/maintain.
For those of you that claim oil and coal will eventually run out .. . .
This seems like a good idea until you read “the stone age did not end because we ran out of stones.” I have lots of stones on my few acres – they are free but bring your own carrier and you load. Likewise, we still have bronze, arrows, whale oil, buggy whips, radio, and so on.
Oil and coal will become less important for energy purposes over time as other sources of energy replace them for this purpose. But run out they won’t.
John Boy (09:24:51) :
The more sustainable our energy sources the better. Better for our planet, our environment, and our and our children’s futures.
Hogwash. Wind energy is both expensive and unreliable. It is both apt to provide energy when it is not needed (like at night) and not provide it when it is needed. Sustainable? Hardly. Try foolish. Yes, I realize “sustainability” is the new buzz word for the Alarmists. Whatever energy sources they are against are conveniently labeled “sustainable”, while all others are labeled non-sustainable. They seem to think that by continually changing the language, they will keep on pulling the wool over people’s eyes which is pretty pathetic, really.
Better for our planet? No, not unless you’ve guzzled the AGW/CC fruit punch, which you obviously have. Better for our children’s futures? I guess. If you like the idea of them having to struggle financially because of our idiotic and hugely expensive war on “carbon”, and sitting in the cold and dark a lot because of unreliable sources of (very expensive) power.
“Oil and coal will eventually run out”. Sure, maybe in 100 years or more. Did you forget natural gas? Nuclear? The point is, there is no reason on earth to run willy-nilly into our energy future, out of fear and ignorance. Indeed, that way is insanity.
I don’t take anyone seriously if they use ‘children’ and ‘future’ in a single sentence. My BS detector goes wild when I hear or read such a thing, and then all the evidence pointing towards a charlatan pours out.
Steven Goddard, the Whitlelee wind farm is situated about 370 metres up on on the hills some 9 miles SSW of Glasgow. However Glasgow is situated beside the river Clyde near to sea level, in the lee of said hills and thus sheltered from prevailing winds, indeed Glasgow is ringed by hills… The Whitelee windfarm is bound to be much more windy than Glasgow – whatever the synoptic situation.
Will you please make that reality clear to any readers – I’m sure it’s not your intention to let anyone think the wind climate of Glasgow and the hills 370 m higher to it’s south south west are the same. As a start can you please post wind data for the wind farm and not Glasgow.
I’ve been trying to inform people I know about windfarms via facebook. Mostly I focus on what they might do to wildlife, taking for granted that people do not understand that these things end up costing the rate payer more money. One of my friends comes on and says, “I do not care about about the bats, the birds or the views so long as my electricity bill goes down.” People still believe that wind power is free, somehow. My friend like most people does not understand how electricity or electric companies works, and really who has the time to self study electrical grids well enough to know what is really going on opposed to the hype put out by the government and the wind industry.
99.99% of the people are too ignorant to have a meaning input as to how an energy grid should be operated. I, like my friend, just want my bills to be as low as possible, and really do not care how the power company achieves this. I also want to be able to use as much electricity as I please, when I please. When I flip a switch, I want something to happen. As long as I pay my bill, the amount of electicity that I use seems to be my own business, and I do not want anyone telling me how much electricity I should be using. If I want to crank my AC to 60 on a hot day, that is my business. If the power company needs more juice, then they should build new generation stations and pass the cost on to me. If I cannot afford the bill then, the power company can shut the service off. For my entire life, the power company was out of sight and out of mind. How this ever became a political issue is beyond me.
Over the last decade, we saw gasoline and diesel skyrocket. As I understand it, these wind power things, require generation for regulation electricity from generators which run on gasoline and diesel, thus increasing demand while prices are already high on a commodity that we have to import. I feel like the last sane man on Earth, which makes me wonder if I am really crazy, because it seems to me that everything that we are doing is the exact opposite of what we should be doing, while a bunch of ignorant people are having conversations which are way beyond their pay grade expecting results which are precisely the opposite of what they should realistically expect.
If anyone knows where the spaceship back to Bizarro World (or Earth?) please take me home.
In a few years the only difference with Banana Countries that you will have is, that instead of banana trees, you will have windmill “trees”…
Your politicians are already the same.