From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
https://www.neso.energy/publications/clean-power-2030
Yesterday I discussed the likelihood of Orsted pulling out of Hornsea 4, as part of their retrenchment. And with Vattenfall already opposed to joining future CfD auctions, there is now an enormous gap between Miliband’s 2030 plans and reality.
As NESO’s Clean Power 2030 makes clear, we will need to increase offshore wind power from 14.7 GW to 50.6 GW by 2030:
https://www.neso.energy/publications/clean-power-2030
Assuming Orsted do pull out of Hornsea 4, there is about 12 GW of new build offshore wind capacity due on stream, which already have CfDs. That takes us to about 27 GW.
East Anglia 2, which along with Hornsea 4, won contracts in last year’s AR6 CfD auction, is targeted to come on stream in 2028/29. It is therefore likely that if projects do not get CfDs this year will not be ready by 2030 anyway.
But more to the point, are we honestly going to find anyone prepared to build another 23 GW in the next five years?
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Not just build 23GW Offshore capacity but complete it to operational. But will 23GW Offshore Wind give you 23GWh every hour 24/7/365? Probably only 23GWh 12-16hrs/day 5 days/week 220 days/yr
The capacity factor for the offshore wind fleet is about 0.35, so 23 GW installed produces about 8 GW of intermittent power on a yearly basis, declining every year as wear and tear sap the output. For example, new rotors will be required within 7 years, and complete replacement (called repowering) in 15 years.
If wind were the only option, the UK would be in serious trouble.
Fortunately, wind is NOT the only option and certainly not the best option.
As I write wind is supplying just under 9% of the required amount of electricity for GB.
By way of confirmation of your observation. One might also consider the dearth of wind powered electricity delivered throughout the month of January. And that during the windiest periods, some of which were storms, bill payers were being charged millions of pounds per day in constraint payments, in other words compensation to the renewables providers because they had to switch off their turbines.
This kind of special pricing and special handling for windmills and solar is what is driving the costs of electricity up.
Rate payers shouldn’t be paying any of these costs, they should fall on the people operating the windmills.
But they are making it their only Allowable Option…unfortunately
According to the recent WUWT article on UK power generation, offshore wind efficiency was 23.5% in 2024.
No banks will finance it at acceptable interest rates and no insurance companies will insure it at acceptable premiums. No matter what the woke bureaucrats in the UK are pronouncing.
The sooner the U-turn, the better for the UK, Germany and Norway.
What is generally not known, the more weather-dependent W/S sources, the less efficient the other, traditional generators operate
They have a hellofatime to counteract the ups and downs of W/S output.
At about 30% W/S, the entire system hits an increasingly thicker concrete wall, operationally and cost wise.
Germany and the UK are hitting that wall more and more hours each day
Base-load nuclear, gas and coal plants are the only rational way forward, plus the additional CO2 is very beneficial for additional flora and fauna growth
European Owners of offshore windmills can claim:
1) An energy communities tax credit worth 10 percent
2) A base tax credit of 30 percent
3) State tax credit incentives of up to 10%
YOUR tax dollars are building these projects so YOU will have much higher electric bills.
Remove YOUR tax dollars and none of these projects would be built, and YOUR electric bills would be lower
There are various conflicting factors at play. Supposedly the latest designs of turbine with bigger blade diameters and hub heights should expect an improved average wind speed and average capacity factor. The reality appears to be different. The larger designs suffer bigger stresses on their blades and rotor hubs, partly the result of increased differential wind speeds between the top and bottom of their travel. Thus is leading to breakdowns and long delays before a repair ship capable of handling the hub height is available: they are in short supply, being busy installing new turbines.
Probably the biggest factor will become the basis on which production is curtailed. Older wind farms get large subsidies if they keep producing even if market prices go negative. Newer wind farms get no subsidy at all in those circumstances, making them first in line to curtail. They are still first in line to curtail when prices are positive, since their CFD subsidies are lower. The result is much lower output. See the effect on Seagreen wind farm.
https://x.com/twallin_james/status/1862443490992357872
The chart from the X:
Flywheel turns to wood…
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/02/07/miliband-hand-taxpayer-bn-wood-burning-power-station-drax/
Funnily enough…
World’s first’ wooden wind turbine blades installed in Germany https://interestingengineering.com/energy/worlds-first-wooden-turbine-blades
Ha! They are easier decommissioned. That means, they burn clean when de contraption catches fire.
Yes! Let’s get out the bangers and roasting forks.
Well that at least provides a solution to the old problem of how to deal with wind turbine blades at the end of life decommissioning stage. Just chop them up and send them to DRAX as pellets for burning.
Every cloud…. 🙂
Probably as much glue/resin in them as there is wood!
Turbine blades have always been balsa wood skinned with glass/epoxy. For years. It drove the price and availability of balsa for model aeroplanes sky high and to unobtainable levels.
Strictly the article’s title is misleading. What they are talking about is the elimination of epoxy/glass skinning.
It doesn’t matter though. Wind Turbines are rapidly becoming a footnote to history.
“Ye canna change the laws of physics”
Will we have the infrastructure to send the power where it’s needed, or will we end up in the mad situation, which we already have, of having to pay constraint payments to keep the wind farms idle, because we literally haven’t wired the damned things up to anything?
Total, incompetent pie in the sky madness.
Also, what’s going to happen on a sunny but windy summer’s day, when wind is pumping out 50 GW, solar more or less the same and demand is perhaps 25 GW against 100 GW supply?
We’re going to be paying for the subsidy farmers to not produce 75 GW of ‘leccy, so the cost of already horrendously expensive energy is going to be multiplied x 4!
The pricing for windmills and solar is totally crazy.
Of course, the reason for this crazy pricing is windmills and solar would not be economically viable without this special pricing.
Insisting on using windmills and solar in the mix is the problem. Windmills and solar should only be involved if they can stand on their own economically. Which means it’s time to phase out windmills and solar before they bankrupt everyone.
My State, Oklahoma, some time ago passed a law forbidding the paying of State subsidies to new windmill facilities. The State legislators said they had to do this, otherwise the State would eventually go bankrupt making these payments.
Oklahoma has an Attorney General who is fighting against all these “renewable” energy scams. There’s a move in the State legislature to ban all future windmill and solar facilities in the State.
President Trump singled out Oklahoma the other day in one of his speeches, saying all 77 counties in Oklahoma had voted for him.
Trump was right but didn’t go far enough. All 77 counties in Oklahoma voted for Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024. Oklahoma is Trump Country. 🙂
Sounds like a well-grounded electorate. Any chance that Langford gets a primary challenge?
I don’t know.
Lankford has done a pretty good job. He got trapped/fooled into helping out the Democrats on their immigration bill, which never got passed because it was a horrible bill that just codified all the bad immigration polices the Democrat wanted. I think he has since seen the light.
That’s about the only bad decision I have seen him make.
I just heard about him supposedly sponsoring a bill to promote Carbon Capture Sequestration (CCS), which I would consider another bad decision, but I don’t have any details yet on what he is actually doing, so I’ll wait until I find out before passing judgement.
As NESO’s Clean Power 2030 makes clear, we will need to increase offshore wind power from 14.7 GW to 50.6 GW by 2030
It won’t help, even if it is done. Look at gridwatch for a graphical view of the problem
https://gridwatch.co.uk/wind
Last month on five occasions about 30GW of installed wind, of which about half was off-shore, delivered less than 5GW. A couple of those periods lasted several days. UK max peak demand during that same month was just under 48GW.
Miliband’s plan is to have a total of about 90GW of wind and 40GW solar in 2030. And demand is also going to rise, because of EVs, heat pumps and now AI, which they have recently taken to promoting. Peak demand in 2030 assuming they succeed at these will be north of 60GW.
So just going on the historical record, there will be times in 2030 when the 90GW of wind will be delivering less than 15GW. At times it will fall below 5GW for several days. This will happen during a time when there is almost no sun during the day, because its winter, and there will in particular be no sun at peak times because sunset. In these latitudes its dark at 4pm in December and January.
So the question for the Government and for NESO is very simple. Where is the 60GW peak demand in 2030 going to be supplied from from? All the believers have to do is write it down:
And its got to add up to more than 60GW actually deliverable, because you need some kind of margin of safety. They have no idea of course, but that is not deterring them.
It can’t be done. Even the amount he is planning on can’t be done, because as Paul Homewood points out, the companies and bids and capacity are not there to do it. But even if they could do it, it would not be enough. How much would be enough? Hard to say, since no-one has ever done this with an economy of this size and type, but my guess is north of 500GW of wind and a lot of storage. Hopeless.
Unless they blink and u-turn and start building gas pretty much now, the country is headed for blackouts. Not just rolling blackouts either, complete nationwide blackouts with cold start and not enough spinning reserve to use for recovery. And it will happen in December or January. .
Trump didn’t have anything good to say about the UK’s off-shore windmills. I think he suggested they should be done away with.
Trump will be visiting the UK pretty soon. I’m sure he will have something to say about the UK’s windmills. Something UK politicians won’t like.
Trump pulled the United States out of the UN International Criminal Court over their persecution of Netanyahu. The UK politicians say they are going to stay in the ICC and not follow Trump out.
So, we’ll have lots of things to talk about on his visit.
Story tip. – it’s only money
The Foreign Office is to open talks on slavery reparations with Caribbean officials demanding trillions of pounds from the UK. – Telegraph
There must be some very old slaves in the Caribbean! I would have thought they were all long dead by now.
Dead people don’t need money.
I hope the FO inform the Caribbean officials that we will be deducting reparations based on the African nation’s involvement with the slave trade both before and after Britain, Holland, Spain, Germany, Portugal and France became involved in the abhorrent trade in human lives.
For example, the Kingdom of Dahomey and the Ashanti Empire were involved in the slave trade, capturing and selling people from neighbouring regions.
What is going to happen to the Climatistas when the Trump Justice Dept. starts enforcing the law?
Just imagine the perplexity on the faces of the corporate media when DJT takes a photo op with Native Americans and avid conservationists thanking him for saving whales, eagles, other birds and bats from the ravages of Unreliable Energy!
He just signed an executive order preventing women from being legally beaten up by men; soon the DemoKKKrats will only have their fellow criminals, sexual predators and the gender confused as their voter base!
“He just signed an executive order preventing women from being legally beaten up by men”
That is already illegal in the United States.
Not in some minor sports venues, like the Paris Olympics!
That one went right over my head! 🙂
You are correct, in the Olympic boxing ring, it is legal for a man to beat up a woman.
Simples. As reliable clean wind power is pie in the sky, it might as well come from imaginary wind mills. Miliband won’t know the difference anyway.
The CCP has a fine, low cost, easy payment program to build to all your infrastructure needs.
And when you can’t pay they take over.
There’s a short delay in the approval for the Rampion next phase. They’re paying lip service to the concerns of residents to 3 more years of seismic pounding destroying their health and happiness (and wildlife). Still strange how fracking is restricted to undetectable vibration levels but wind farm piling can knock dust off your walls and rattle your rafters and windows rhtymically every few seconds 24hrs a day for years on end. Of course, inevitably, it will still go ahead, with some pretend mitigation efforts.
I am not so sure. It doesn’t matter how much Miliband enthuses, the harsh reality is that a windfarm needs massive subsidies, and Rachel Thieves has run out of cash. Already.
When money talks, bullshit walks…
The UK Govt does not pay for Wind Farms, it signs Contracts for Difference guaranteeing that the Electricity bill payers will pay more to subsidise the Wind Farms. So they can increase the CFD strike rates and not increase Govt spending, at some point the bill payers will be asking what happened to their £300 a year less promised by Millivolt. But like frogs in gently warming water it’s going to take some time.
It’s the running out if other people’s money that’s the real killer. It was going on bills rather than taxes.
The best advice we can give to Ed Miliband is, when you are in a hole stop digging.
The damage this bizarre fixation with CO2 in the atmosphere is creating is like a story from a medieval religion looking to build towers to heaven.
Miliband is so invested emotionally not financially in this crazy virtue signalling pissing contest he hasn’t noticed the big boys have moved on to more important things.
If this madness continues for much longer I genuinely fear for the future of the Western World.
UK is not the Western world. Thank Clapton.
Like him or loathe him the Donald will probably drive a coach and horses between environmentalism and profiteering.
If the USA goes fossil/nuclear and abandons renewables the world – in order to compete at all – will simply have to follow.
Renewable nonsense is kept alive solely by the paying of lip service to international organisations that are necessary to make sure no one steps out of line or off message.
The Donald has simply ceased to bother with them.
The main US organizations funding the Green Blob are looking for new funding and a new home, thanks to PDJT! Western leaders are soon going to have to explain to their voters just why their countries are being left in a cloud of dust by those that practice sanity!
I think what we are going to see, although in reality it all depends on the weight of the fat green envelopes passing between developers and ministers, is that Rachel Thieves attempts to ru[i]n the economy like a game of snakes and ladders, is not going to leave credible budget for Miliband’s [channel tunnel] visions, where the light at the end is simply a rapidly approaching EuroStar train…
The dichotomy between a double whammy of subsidising yet more expensive useless wind mills and doubling electricity prices in the face of an insurgent Reform party that looks set to become the largest party in the Commons, or sacrificing Miliband’s Green [wet] dreams on the altar of pragmatism, will be an interesting problem for the Queer Harmer. Rachel Thieves attempts to destroy the nations economy and all private savings are also working spectacularly well to drain any credit credibility of the government..
The EU is rubbing its hands with glee.
In short there probably wont be the cash.
Perhaps the press leaks about ‘new nuclear’ are a sign that political realities are beginning to dawn in what passes for the minds of the New Left.
It would be ironic if Miliband’s zeal for renewables ended up being the last nail in their coffin. To date people with absolutely no belief in their utility had used the renewable narrative to quietly line their pockets. It was never intended that government ministers would actually believe in their bullshit, rather than simply taking their green envelopes….
Mark Morano said on Fox News this morning that Trump’s Executive Orders have resulted in a complete shutdown of off-shore windmill building off the northeast coast of the United States.
I think some of these same windmill companies are also involved in building UK windmills, so I wonder how this loss of business in the U.S. will affect these companies with regard to the UK market.
It will clear bottlenecks in equipment supplies allowing faster builds, Millivolt is too stupid to realise the mistake.
If they can finance them.
https://youtu.be/m_c_r8whAwU
The UK Govt does not provide the finance but a Contract for Difference ie a price guarantee per Kwh the consumer is forced to pay not the Govt. This guaranteed price provides the finance and is set at stupidly high figures to ensure the wind farms are built. We are stuffed.
Story tip:
One of the most clueless articles on battery storage, N-Z, etc, from a normally credible outlet I’ve seen for a while: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/02/08/battery-powered-britain-race-prevent-net-zero-blackouts/
Essentially,
the author confuses units (GW v GWh),
doesn’t appear to understand the significance of either,
appears to think that a battery that can supply power for perhaps 4 hours is comparable to a nuclear power station that can do so for 40+ years,
and most fundamentally has no grasp of the scale of storage that would be required for a 100% renewable grid, such that 300 MW sounds like a lot, and the 25 GW planned, which sounds impressive, is perhaps 0.1% of what is actually needed (and the units are wrong here as well).
Jonathan Leake, hang your head in shame.
Edit:
Arrgghhh……….. the forum is screwing up my formatting again!
Every BESS I have seen is promoted using the same Unit of Measures, it’s as if its done deliberately to confuse and hide the shortcomings. Quoting power but not the time it can provide that power is useless information.
Meanwhile on the plus side
Both Equinor and Orsted say they are cutting back on their unreliables plans because of poor profitability, Equinor by 50% and Orsted by 25%
Equinor at the same time is increasing its oil and gas production by 10%
Abandon strike prices, CfDs and mandates and all of our renewable problems go away.