Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t michel – Britons are experiencing first hand why wind is utterly unsuitable for reliable electricity production.
Britain Has Gone Nine Days Without Wind Power
By Rachel Morison
7 June 2018, 14:00 GMT+10
- Forecasters see wind output staying low for at least two weeks
- Wind generating 4.3% of U.K. electricity on Wednesday
Britain’s gone nine days with almost no wind generation, and forecasts show the calm conditions persisting for another two weeks.
The wind drought has pushed up day-ahead power prices to the highest level for the time of year for at least a decade. Apart from a surge expected around June 14, wind levels are forecast to stay low for the next fortnight, according to The Weather Company.
U.K. turbines can produce about as much power as 12 nuclear reactors when conditions are right. During the “Beast from the East” storm that hit Britain in March, they generated record levels of power and at times provided the biggest share of the nation’s electricity.
…
Wind droughts can last for months. The Australian CSIRO BOM recently explained a three month wind drought in South Australia, with more to come in the future, was an inevitable consequence of climate change.
Unfortunately for anyone looking to the CSIRO Australian government agencies for climate guidance, this was a revision to a 2011 CSIRO prediction that climate change would create stronger winds.
Luckily the current British wind drought occurred in Summer, but wind droughts can occur any time of year.
If countries like Britain go 100% renewable, its only a matter of time until a prolonged winter wind drought coincides with near zero solar energy availability, leading to weeks or even months without power at the coldest time of the year. Low wind conditions in Britain sometimes coincide with winter high pressure systems, which can be extremely cold.
No conceivable battery backup would bail a country out of a disaster like that.
Update (EW): Fixed the link to the Bloomberg article (h/t Latitude)
Correction (EW): BOM expert Darren Ray explained that the drop in winds was because climate change, not the CSIRO. The reason provided was “The tropics expand as the planet warms and that sees high pressure systems staying throughout the south longer than they used to.”. The original article quoting Darren Ray is unfortunately paywalled but if you search Google you will see the quote. (h/t Nick Stokes)
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Renewables are a fraud because the industry definitively understood by 2014 that their product couldn’t deliver.
Google (a member of the green cartel) did the research tearing-up hundreds of millions on renewables R & D . . .
Two Google engineers who worked on the RE<C initiative opened up about why the team halted their efforts. And it wasn't because they thought existing renewables were enough to decarbonize the global economy.
"Trying to combat climate change exclusively with today’s renewable energy technologies simply won’t work . . . we need a fundamentally different approach" wrote Google's Ross Koningstein and David Fork in a 2014 piece published in IEEE's Spectrum.
The current conservative Government in Australia is subsidising fraudsters with taxpayer's money.
Malcolm & Co must go!
The attitude of the Greens seems to be that lying and exaggeration are OK if they are in the interests of saving the planet. Problem I see there is that once lying is involved, how do we know that ANYTHING being said is truthful? It may be that the need to save the planet is itself a lie.
Since it has been admitted that the campaign to switch to electric cars is motivated by climate alarmism, how do we know that there is any truth in the claim that diesels pollute? This could also be a lie, calculated to serve the underlying agenda.
Bottom line is that if you want to convince people of anything, moral integrity is king. As soon as that is lost, all else is as to naught.
I remeber some special vid about some multilayered setup of some stuff that they said would produce huge power for cheap(ish) outlays and how the goog was going to set the standard n lead the world sorta spiel
i wondered what happened..figured it flopped and was swept under the carpet.
lol why am i NOT the least surprised?
Warren
Two illustrations you might like to look into.
The first is an 18 minute TED talk by the late Dr. David McKey, a committed green, examining the practicality of renewable energy, which he demonstrates is ludicrous. In his terms, he uses ‘back of envelope’ arithmetic so the 18 minute talk is interesting, informative and often amusing. Well worth watching.
The second is a written article by Matt Ridley. Again, short and informative, about the actual costs of renewables in terms of the physical and environmental damage they do. Again, very worth a read.
Neither of them are difficult to understand. If I get them, they can’t be.
https://www.ted.com/talks/david_mackay_a_reality_check_on_renewables
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/wind-still-making-zero-energy/
Do the simple honest appraisal, particularly for WT’s. Their inefficiencies can never be engineered out, regardless of how much R&D money companies or even governments spend on it!
When provided, their power outputs are 0-100% of their plate rated capacity, depending entirely on the uncontrollable capricious wind. Bearing in mind the common occurrence of extended periods of no/low winds, even during periods of maximum power demand, then the necessary base load standby units required to maintain power supplies when needed have to have 100% of this total plate rated WT capacity. That means massively more over-capacity of power generation has to be provided and with the standby units’ capacity used to input current varying WT power output shortfalls, i.e. operating inefficiently and thus far more expensively. In addition, WT’s are increasingly being sited in high ground and off-shore locations, well away from areas of actual power demand. That means that Power Transmission works within the overall national Power Grid system have to be extended and enhanced to be able to use the WT power.
These engineering inefficiencies mean that, in the UK at least and probably globally, subsidies have to be made to the base load standby power supplier, and not just the WT operator, simply to make their operations commercially viable!
Analysis, some years ago, by UK government appointed independent specialists concluded that Gas Turbines are the only available base load power system available that can cope with accommodating and matching the varying current WT power shortfalls as well as providing rapid start up when needed.
Overall, using WT’s requires WT’s, equal capacity GT’s, extended and enhanced PT works and subsidies for both the GT’s and the GT standby’s! On the other hand, using the same capacity of GT’s operating efficiently as base load units requires only the GT’s alone and no subsidies. The choice of Power Generation System is a no brainer!
Ah, but the Greens will say: ” what about the CO2 emission pollution?” The answer to that is quite simple, even if we accept the need to curb CO2 emissions! Using past UK data, CCGT’s emit 365 tonnes of CO2 per Gwh power generated. WT’s actually input only 30-40% of their plated rated output in any year even when including the new grossly expensive remote offshore monsters. That means the GT’s have to provide 60-70% of the overall WT/GT standby base load system’s rated output. That means the CO2 savings are not as claimed100% of the fossil fuelled plant CO2 emissions but only, at best, 30-40%. Inputting the present day costs of rectifying the future effects of this annual rate of net CO2 savings using figures produced by Stern and others, doesn’t even scratch the costs of the above mentioned necessary additional works needed within the WT/GT/PT total system needed.
Using WT’s can never be anywhere near cheaper than using GT’s alone. In addition, the cost of a massive air-tight greenhouse needed to make any nation’s Green efforts to reduce CO2 effective would be need but wasted money, given other nation’s abject failure to cease and/or even reduce their CO2 emissions!
I haven’t checked the last couple of days, but so far this month the lowest 5 minute value for wind was at 9:05 AM on Sunday 3rd, when the combined output of all 11836MW of metered turbines dropped to 46 MW! That’s equivalent to 0.39% of capacity and 0.19% of grid demand. Note that there is roughly 40% more capacity (smaller locally “embedded” turbines) which doesn’t show, but as the old saying goes “40% more than bugger all is STILL bugger all” The forecast is showing very few isobars over the UK for the coming weekend, so this abysmal result may yet be surpassed…
wind drought???
roflmao!!!!
nice calm days not a thing to complain about ..until? wind power birdshredders got “special”
I’m not alone in knowing the worlds gone crazy
Ironically, I see that this week’s New Scientist is pushing 100% renewables. What perfect timing!
I haven’t bought NS for many years, due to the incessant climate change propaganda.
The greenies are always claiming that climate change is a disaster. Yes, it has caused many disasters and all of them mann-made e.g. wind farms, bio fuels, high energy prices that mostly harm the poor and the corruption of science.
Chris
Does the article account for wind droughts?
What if we skip wind and solar and just rely on “back-up” generation.
In my experience here in New Zealand, winter yacht racing tends to have to cope with dead calms or very high winds. If the windmills will not, or can not, work in either circumstance, what was the point of building them?
Boom and bust does not a reliable grid make. Pay up.
In 2017 11GW’s of UK wind capacity struggled to get past 1gw/hour for 7 months, I watched http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ every single day. A snip at £400 billion. Greg Clark secretary of state at BEIS said in 2017 we should rejoice because in 2016 the UK had generated 14% of electricity from renewables. I have asked Clark BEIS and CCC how much catastrophic anthropogenic global warming has the UK averted by mitigating 0.0000037586% of global Co2 emissions. After my 4th time of asking BEIS said in a short terse email “we are not going to communicate with you further on this topic”. I must assume that BEIS doesn’t know the answer to my question and I must assume that no one else does either.
Apparently the planet has spent $3 trillion on wind turbines since 2004 but I have never seen any data or even estimates as to how much CAGW has been averted at this vast expenditure. The only comment I can find is from a German mathematician who said that had Germany specifically spent Euros 150 billion on solar panels to avert CAGW then CAGW might have been postponed for 1 hour. Presumably there will be willing bidders to spend Euros 3.5 trillion to keep us safe for one whole day. I live in hope.
Demand in the UK now is 36.28GW’s Wind 0.44GW’s. I have asked UK politicians to volunteer as a maternity suite advisor to inform a new Mum needing an emergency C section for a premature delivery that this service is not available because the wind isn’t blow and the local UN apparatchik refuses to switch on the diesel back up generator because Co2 is about to cause an apocalypse? About in green language means any time in the future up to and maybe one hundred years hence or half way through the next generation.
We have thousands of university professors in the UK whose whole existence and life style is predicated upon the belief that Co2 has the potential to cause an apocalypse but when you take them to task as I do repeatedly they repeat the hypothesis word for word until they point they are confronted by data which is not open to question and then they run for hills or get upset because their beliefs are being questioned at all. And government departments continue to hand out grants basically to anyone who asks the only proviso is “will your work underline governments green propaganda that by mitigating Co2 we are dedicated to protecting the environment”, OK heres another £25 million. If you look on the internet most of these grants are to repeat experiments already completed and the results are always the same. Multiple lines of evidence that Co2 needs to be extinguished now. I can’t get used to the idea that “scientists” after years of education and countless phd’s remain oblivious to the idea that being a scientist should encompass a high degree of scepticism but if you listened to the recent BBC Radio 4 week of broadcasts the opposite was true. To a person they recited anecdotal evidence of problems across the planet and the conclusion was that in each instance the problem would go away if we just stopped emitting Co2.
I have asked every single one of the 5 contributors what stage in history do you think mitigating some or all Co2 emissions would return us to and identify why that point in time would be more preferable and more civilised than today. Like asking Greg Clark how much CAGW has been averted by mitigating a smidgen of Co2 zero zilch nothing. So unless something radical changes at the top UK tax payers will have to continue funding university professors to transit the planet to identify each miniscule historically unresolvable or previously unknown problem exaggerate it out of all proportion to get another grant to repeat the process which allows even more deep ocean blue water diving off the Maldives or Tahiti tolerable only if the accommodation is carbon neutral.
Robin Pagnamenta in the Times yesterday said Wylfa nuclear was not a good idea because nuclear is expensive overshoots delivery dates and always costs more therefore wind at £57.50 was cheaper and more reliable. I have Robin the latest Gridwatch data which made clear the erratic unreliability of wind but as usual he did not respond.
Until this article I was starting to believe that I was the only person on the planet who understood that wind turbines only worked when the blew at the time speed.
Enough I am depressed.
It’d be funny if it didn’t affect people now — a “wind drought”. We will soon be including another one — a “sun drought”?
beng135,
In the Seattle WA area, direct sunlight is the exception, not the norm, during a typical NorthWet winter. The locals refer to the occasional direct sunlight interludes as ‘sun breaks’ and the local weather forecasters even project when we might again see a ‘sun break’ a day or two in advance. Creative linguistics….. to avoid saying “It’s gonna be mostly dreary and rainy, as far as we can see.”
NorthWet to describe Seattle.
Probably a typo, but still a good one.
Yes, here in west MD, we hardly saw the sun this year from Feb thru much of May. Of course I reference the coming “sun drought” issue to the future mountainsides covered w/the eco-loons’ solar panels.
A wind drought. Must be climate change.
A real catch 22.
What will the greenies come up to solve this dilemma?
Trump should start his conversation with Theresa May something like this: We are no longer going to export our wood pellets as a matter of national security. Now, let’s talk trade.
Years ago (80’s – 2010) I worked at a power plant along the Missouri river. One of the electrical engineers was a gung-ho environmentalist. He lived on a bluff along the river with near constant wind. He decided to build a wind turbine to help reduce his electric bill. As he was a member of the local IEEE, he invited the group to his home and demonstrated the system. All attending heaped great praise on his project.
For the first few years he was constantly bragging about his wind turbine and how much it was saving him. The system even included a bank of batteries designed for use in electric forklifts and an inverter giving him more-or-less continuous electricity. Also had a dual breaker entrance panel that allowed for transfer to the mains.
As the years passed there were occasional complaints about replacing failed parts and the high cost of a crane to lift parts to the top of his tower, similar to the square hi-tension towers you see on the highway but smaller. Luckily, he had access to parts at wholesale and could make most repair himself. In one discussion with him he revealed to me that now that the system is over ten years old, that the maintenance is costing as much as if I was buying electricity from the utility. He added “Worse is that often I will go a week or more where I get no power from the Wind Turbine. “Wind is just not reliable enough to go off grid, so I have to continue to pay the minimum electric charge even when I use no electricity.”
My years with him convinced me that wind and solar can only be a supplement to fossil power and the only way to reduce CO2 is Nuclear power.
It can only be a supplement in an area with substantial hydroelectric capacity, as hydro is the only power source that can ramp up and down efficiently enough to counteract the vagaries of the wind and sun.
Basically, all you are doing is making the water behind the dam last longer, you aren’t saving any fossil fuels.
It’s OK – we in the UK have acres of warehouse space dedicated to holding diesel generators in case of a renewable shortfall. There’s a flaw in the thinking there – but I just can’t put my finger on it
Denmark’s wind turbines are not doing a whole lot better, despite they have so many.
Currently 21:50 on Friday 8th June 2018 they contribute 6.4% of the consumption. Most electricity is imported from Norway and Sweden, where they use mainly hydro and nuclear.
See: https://energinet.dk/energisystem_fullscreen
In the UK the Good Energy Company supplies tens of thousands of customers possibly 100k households and claims to have its own wind and solar power sources.
One would imagine that these customers are without electricity at the moment as it is a windless night in the UK. In reality they are probably and appropriately watching “Would I Lie To You” on TV and feeling superior to the rest of the UK`s citizens who are using that nasty fossil fuel produced electricity.
Is it me or is the font here getting smaller? I just cannot read the replies.
The fonts for the replies to an original post are much smaller than the fonts of the original post. The fonts should be made the same size.
If you adjust your screen to make the original post more readable, then the replies are too small, and if you adjust to make the replies more readable, then the original post’s font is too big.
Ah, yes; adding in the proper handwaving distraction that somehow blames mankind and CO₂
At the same time, these geniuses admit they do not have a clue regarding future climate; or they would not have built electrical grid components easily scuttled by “climate”.
Wind droughts were the reason that in the Domesday book a little while ago windmills were recorded as taxed very much less than water mills as they were considered unreliable as a source of power compared to water. It would appear our scientists are a teeny bit behind the times in their knowledge base.
I have my view blighted by a wind “farm” and can tell you that this winter a week long period of foggy still weather meant that the output of the wind farm and incidentally the nearby solar “park” together would not have powered our street according to the figures when the rated output a was a thousand times that.
Enjoy your energy doldrums, Britain.
Let me guess … the lack of wind is due to … SUDDEN, EXTREME-WEATHER, CHANGE … caused by Global Warming.
I thought this whole green thing was about peak oil? Now they tell me that we humans have just used all the wind up?