Paying Much More For Much Less

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach

There’s an interesting and authoritative new [commenters pointed out it’s from 2012, I can’t find any newer research] study on the lifespan of those ugly bird-and-bat-choppers yclept “wind turbines”. It’s called “The Performance of Wind Turbines in the United Kingdom and Denmark“.

Here’s the Executive Summary, all emphasis is mine:

Executive Summary

1. Onshore wind turbines represent a relatively mature technology, which ought to have achieved a satisfactory level of reliability in operation as plants age. Unfortunately, detailed analysis of the relationship between age and performance gives a rather different picture for both the United Kingdom and Denmark with a significant decline in the average load factor of onshore wind farms adjusted for wind availability as they get older. An even more dramatic decline is observed for offshore wind farms in Denmark, but this may be a reflection of the immaturity of the technology.

2. The study has used data on the monthly output of wind farms in the UK and Denmark reported under regulatory arrangements and schemes for subsidising renewable energy. Normalised age-performance curves have been estimated using standard statistical techniques which allow for differences between sites and over time in wind resources and other factors.

3. The normalised load factor for UK onshore wind farms declines from a peak of about 24% at age 1 to 15% at age 10 and 11% at age 15. The decline in the normalised load factor for Danish onshore wind farms is slower but still significant with a fall from a peak of 22% to 18% at age 15. On the other hand for offshore wind farms in Denmark the normalised load factor falls from 39% at age 0 to 15% at age 10. The reasons for the observed declines in normalised load factors cannot be fully assessed using the data available but outages due to mechanical breakdowns appear to be a contributory factor.

4. Analysis of site-specific performance reveals that the average normalised load factor of new UK onshore wind farms at age 1 (the peak year of operation) declined significantly from 2000 to 2011. In addition, larger wind farms have systematically worse performance than smaller wind farms. Adjusted for age and wind availability the overall performance of wind farms in the UK has deteriorated markedly since the beginning of the century.

5. These findings have important implications for policy towards wind generation in the UK. First, they suggest that the subsidy regime is extremely generous if investment in new wind farms is profitable despite the decline in performance due to age and over time. Second, meeting the UK Government’s targets for wind generation will require a much higher level of wind capacity – and, thus, capital investment – than current projections imply. Third, the structure of contracts offered to wind generators under the proposed reform of the electricity market should be modified since few wind farms will operate for more than 12–15 years.

Not much more that I can say after that most devastating indictment of wind turbines. In a mere ten years, the UK wind farms are producing less than half of what they produced when they were new.

So … why do people still want to build wind farms in the UK? The simple answer is … subsidies. The UK populace is getting royally screwed by their government with its insane subsidies. Here’s an example, the subsidies for some of the largest solar plants in the UK:

I’m sure that you noticed the oddity … in each and every case, the government subsidy is more than the value of the energy produced … I gotta say, that’s dumber than cubical ball bearings. 

Now, the UK government did get smart and end onshore wind subsidies … so of course, there are lots of people screaming and pressuring the government to lift the ban on the subsidies. From the Guardian:

The wind industry said if a bar on onshore windfarm subsidies was lifted it would allow the construction of 794 projects which have won consent through the planning system and are ready to build.

Yeah, I bet it would allow construction. Throwing big piles of money at construction projects tends to do that. The most significant point is this:

Without subsidies, nobody is building windfarms in the UK …

The total cost of UK subsidies for renewables is stunning. Renewable subsidies in the UK in 2016, the most recent data I could find, is just under £5 billion with a “b” UK pounds (US$ 6,000,000,000). And since the start of the subsidies in 2003 up until 2016, the total spent is £23 billion with a “b” pounds (US$28,000,000,000).

And what did they get for that £23 billion? From 2003 to 2016, UK renewables generated about 242 terawatt-hours of electricity. This means that the renewable subsidies have been 9.7 UK pence per kilowatt-hour (kWhr) (11.6 US cents per kWhr).

Here is the truly tragic part. The UK subsidy of 11.6 US cents per kWhr is about 10% more than the current US retail electricity price of about 10.7 cents per kWhr … so the UK consumer is paying more in renewable subsidies than the US consumer pays retail for its electricity.

Now the US is not without fault in this matter. However, our renewable subsidies are much smaller, only 1.7 cents per kilowatt-hour … bad, but not outrageous.

TL;DR version?

Solar and wind power are worse than useless. Useless would be bad enough, but they are also horrendously expensive, and subsidies make it worse. The UK population pays more in renewable electricity subsidies per kilowatt-hour than the US pays retail for electricity. And to add insult to injury … the windmills are failing faster than anyone but work-hardened cynics like myself would have imagined.

Best to all from our home on the hillside, where from my window I see the cat out hunting in the evening summer grass and the sea wind is bringing us tantalizing hints of its oceanic home …

w.

DATA: UK Renewable Subsidies