Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I came across a laudatory article about the Scottish Hywind project, entitled “The world’s first floating offshore wind farm turns 5 — here’s how it’s going“. It’s all full of congratulations about the “capacity factor”, meaning how much of the nameplate capacity it actually generates. And in fact, at a claimed 54% capacity factor, that is impressive.
The wind farm has a nameplate capacity of 30 megawatts (MW). At 54% capacity factor, that’s 142 gigawatt-hours generated per year. As I said, impressive.
There’s just one leetle tiny fly in the ointment … as detailed here, electricity from Hywind is being sold to the grid, not to the consumer but to the grid, for $0.25 per kilowatt-hour. That’s about four times the cost of fossil fuel electricity, and guess who is subsidizing the difference?
Yep. The poor UK taxpayer. At $0.25 per kWh, that electricity subsidy is costing the taxpayers just over $26 megabucks per year, about an eighth of a billion dollars over the five years of its existence … hell of a deal.
This is the ugly reality of wind and solar. They are hugely subsidized by the taxpayers no matter where they are installed. The subsidies are both direct and indirect. They don’t make money, they are not economically competitive anywhere except in the fevered green dreams of the ecolarmists who are forcing them on the poor taxpayer.
Here’s the bottom line:
- In the US, the average electricity price to the consumer is on the order of $0.10 per kilowatt-hour.
- The Manhattan Institute says that globally, we’ve subsidized wind/solar/biofuels to the tune of $5 trillion over 20 years.
- Our World In Data says that globally, they’ve delivered 9.12 petawatt-hours (1015 watt-hours) in 20 yrs.
That’s $0.55 per kilowatt-hour that we’ve thrown down a rat-hole.
(Folks don’t realize how big $5 trillion dollars is … here’s a way to grasp it. If we were to waste a million dollars each and every single hour, setting fire to $24 million dollars a day, 24/7/365, it would take us 570 years to waste $5 trillion. Think about all the good things that money might have done. To pick just one thing, it could have provided clean drinking water to every single village on the planet with lots of money left over … but noooo, the green lobby must have its insanity paid for by the taxpayer.)
And what has the five trillion dollars bought us?
As our UK cousins say, “Sweet Fanny Adams”, a polite way of saying sweet F*** All. In other words …
Nothing.
Grrrr …
The good news, on the other hand, is that drought-prone northern California where I live is getting lots of rain. Here’s the view from my porch, with very wet pumpkins on the patio table.
Of course, according to the media and the oh-so-scientific climastrologers, last year when there was a drought in California it was a sure sign of dreaded climate change. And now when we get rain, guess what?
It’s another sure sign of dreaded climate change …
… and also of course, to go with the so-called “good news” about wind power discussed above, the bad news is that the California electrical grid can’t handle wind. Go figure. We’re out of power at our house, and it’s far, far from just us. Here’s the Pacific Gas and Electric outage map. I live an hour and a half north of San Francisco, which is where the red triangle is on the coast.
As a result, we’re running chez nous on our trusty Honda 2200i gas-powered generator for the indeterminate future, the PG&E site says “ESTIMATED RESTORATION: To Be Announced”, the gorgeous ex-fiancee and our grandson are playing the acoustic piano, the rain is pouring down, and all the woke people around here with their $70,000 sparky cars can’t charge them.
As for me, the grass is green outside my window, and as long as I’m looking down at it and not up, my life is wonderful.
My very best to all of you, whatever your weather may be.
w.
My Usual: Misunderstandings are the bane of the intarwebs. To reduce the number, please quote the exact words you are referring to, so we can know just what and whom you are discussing.
For those not familiar with Sweet Fanny Adams. It refers to a gruesome child murder of the mid 19th century.
Fanny was out playing with her sister and friend, a man persuaded her to go with him and gave the others money for sweets. Not long after her head was found, then a search revealed many parts of her scattered round the area.. The killer was found fairly quickly.
The use of the phrase Sweet Fanny Adams was first used by naval ratings about their tinned meat rations. It gradually entered common usage.
So poor Fanny is remembered although the story has been forgotten by most.
I heard the story on the BBC radio in the days when it was worth listening to, 1960 something
I can’t wrap my head around floating wind turbines.
(context…retired Asset Integrity engineer for large IOC)
So we have this large rotating mass…very carefully balanced …. At the top of a very tall tower…..and then we make it sway……..
Sounds like a recipe for some very interesting dynamic loads…..
Norwegian group Equinor are building the world’s largest floating wind farm, Hywind Tampen, off the coast of Norway and was on track to install 7 of 11 turbines by the end of 2022. Ironically the turbines will provide power to Norway’s offshore oil and gas platforms 🙂
windmill crash in the polder ……
https://netherlands.postsen.com/news/126030/Broken-windmill-Zeewolde-came-to-a-standstill-last-night-after-an-error-message-%E2%80%98We-were-just-about-to-send-a-technician%E2%80%99–Zeewolde.html
Just imagine what $5 trillion dollars would have done if left in the hands of the f-ing people the earned it in the first place.
To see how effective wind & solar are, check out any grid generation real time website
Any politician with half an ounce of sense should look at this real time & historic data and conclude – wind & solar are a waste of taxpayer money, we are conning and impoverishing our electorate, we are making a few landowners & suppliers very rich, no one with decency, honesty & integrity could with any shred of belief, force these useless things on our planet
The father of ex UK PM David Cameron’s wife earns £500,000 pa rent from the two wind farms on his estate.
Ahh, I detect a flaw in your argument
Willis said: “In the US, the average electricity price to the consumer is on the order of $0.10 per kilowatt-hour.”
This is not correct. Here in the free state of Florida, my annual average for 2022 was $0.139/kWh and my average consumption was 726 kWh/month. And it is much higher in other states as per the following:
https://paylesspower.com/blog/electric-rates-by-state/
And the US average is $0.1609/kWh:
https://www.saveonenergy.com/electricity-rates/
Thanks, D. Per the EIA, the average US cost is 11.1¢ per kWh. This is a bit higher than I had remembered, due to both the penetration of expensive renewables and the rising cost of gas.
The problem is large states like California with big renewable costs. Price here is 19.65¢/kWh. Half of the states have electricity costs under 10¢/kWh.
Regards,
w.
w. ==> Of course, drought (little rain) followed by “too much rain” followed by drought followed by too much rain …. that is California’s climate — always been.
REPLACE A GRID THAT WORKED AND WAS ALMOST 99% RELIABLE, WITH UNRELIABLE SOURCES OF POWER?
Who does that?
You would think we put Communist China in charge of the U.S. energy sector, and they wanted to sabotage our manufacturing sector.
w. ==> The media, even here in New York, is all agog at disaster in California from the river of rain and cyclone bomb.
Can you give us a more disinterested view of what is actually happening north of Santa Cruz or Big Sur?
Last time I was in California during a Pineapple Express, Carpenteria (south of Santa Barbara) was being washed into the sea and students from UCSB and UCLA were there in mobs trying to sandbag newly created raging rivers pouring down the coastal hills. Officials has redirected all the water and mud into the Hispanic neighborhoods to save the car dealerships along the highway — a group of us commandeered a truckload of sandbags and re-re-directed the flow down the main street/highway where is could spread out harmlessly and get to the sea then showed the people in the barrios how to unclog the street drains and save their houses. We did have to hightail it out of town after that….some press called is sabotage.
Funny story, Kip, thanks. No clue what’s happening down south. Here on the north coast hills above San Francisco the wind is the major cause of damage—downed power lines (we’re still out of power here), trees across the roads, and tragically, a toddler killed in a double-wide mobile home when a redwood fell on it.
Around here the lowlands flood, there are a number of roads shut by flooding.
I’m headed to town later (Sebastopol, from Occidental where I live), so I’ll know a bit more in a while.
w.
Posted above.
This is no secret in the UK. We pay a ‘green Levy’ on energy bills to subsidise ‘renewable energy’. Then the government ‘give us money’ (actually taxpayers money) to help pay our bills. Here’s a crazy solution – stop the green levy, that simple act would reduce our energy bills.
But no, much better to charge energy users a premium, give it to electricity providers then use tax money to give us our money back! Confused, I am.
Texas data shows that not only is wind intermittent, it also tends to produce during periods of low demand – specifically, around midnight.
54% capacity factor sounds great, but not if half of that is during low demand periods – and is intermittent nonetheless on week and month duration on a regular basis.
In the UK, the diurnal variation in wind output on average is fairly small: a good chunk is offshore. That does mean a tendency to overproduce at night when demand is low, and underproduce during evening rush hour when demand is maximal. The times of day and night when wind is stronger do vary across geographies and climates.
This study of onshore wind in the Netherlands shows the seasonal variations as well as variations by altitude. Turbine hub heights are now trending up beyond 100m. The windiest months of winter show relatively little diurnal variation at those levels, but lower wind speeds in summer are also more variable and lowest around dawn.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/27/11/jcli-d-13-00286.1.xml