From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
When it’s a windy day, guess what? We get a lot of wind power!
Yesterday we got 60% of our power from wind:
It does not take a genius to work out that when Ed Miliband succeeds in tripling wind power capacity, there will be far too much wind power for the grid to handle.
I have analysed the half hourly generation data for the full winter just gone. It’s a fairly basic summary, but my model assumes a tripling of wind output, 4400 MW of fixed nuclear generation and existing demand profile.
It calculates that there will be 19 TWh of surplus wind power during those periods when wind and nuclear exceed demand. Obviously there will be other periods when wind and nuclear cannot supply all demand.
Whatever battery storage we have by 2030 will be far too tiny to make any difference, so most of that 19 TWh will have to be constrained. At a going rate of £100/MWh, that could cost £1.9 billion. And this is just for winter.
With much lower demand in summer and plenty of solar power as well, plenty more surplus electricity will have to be chucked away.
The problem is probably much worse still. Although I have not factored in higher demand, the increased proportion of offshore wind in the mix will increase wind generation above my projections.
There is also the issue of grid stability. I cannot see how the grid can operate stably with above 90% of generation coming from wind at times. Including some dispatchable power to stabilise the grid will automatically increase the projected surpluses.
Thirdly is the question of regional imbalances. Will the grid be able to cope with large amounts of wind power coming from Scotland and the North Sea? It is, of course, lack of transmission capacity which results in constraint payments to Scottish wind farms. OFGEM is busy spending tens of billions upgrading the grid, but whether even that will cope in future must be debatable.
Some of the surpluses are massive, as much as 32 MW on one occasion. Surpluses were above 20 MW on 16% of the three month period. The model also predicts that more than half of wind generation will have to be constrained for 10% of the time.
The practical difficulties faced by NESO in having to implement all of this, every half hour are mid boggling.
Just a glance at yesterday’s generation shows how huge the problem is. Demand was 35.9 GW. Of that, 21.5 GW came from wind and 3.4 GW from nuclear. Triple that wind capacity and you are looking at about 68 GW from wind and nuclear.
Half of that will have to be switched off on average, and more at times of low demand.
And then the following day there could be zero, zip, nada.
If only we had reliable sources of electricity.
We do have reliable sources, they are called coal and gas.
We just aren’t allowed to use them.
This highlights the fallacy of LCOE –
LCOE has two major math fallacies
A – it only measures the cost of generation, not the full system cost
B – It assumes all the electricity produced by wind and solar is consumed. Due to the need for excess capacity to handle the down days, there is excess generation on the good days which is not consumed. Thus the denominator is grossly overstated.
The UN Economic Commission for Europe and its partners has recently launched an initiative to develop a full system cost approach to guide investment in energy. They want a full system approach to to get rid of the deficiencies that traditional LCOE analysis contains.
https://unece.org/climate-change/press/unece-and-partners-launch-initiative-develop-full-system-cost-approach-guide
The LCOE studies that I have seen, also tend to assume that wind and solar facilities will all last as long as do coal and gas facilities.
must be some way 🙂
Over the past 12 months in the UK, wind generation was 10.29GW, this from an installed capacity of 35.51GW. So these wind generation facilities operated at a capacity factor – efficiency – of 28.98%.
And generation from solar facilities was 2.03GW from an installed capacity of 22.13GW – they operated at an efficiency of 9.17%.
So wind and solar facilities together generated 12.32GW from a combined installed capacity of 57.64GW, operating at a joint efficiency of 21.37%.
If wind and solar combined installed capacity is increased 3-fold, taking it to 173GW, 12 month generation will be . . . 37GW.
But when there’s no wind and no sun – dunkelflaute conditions, which can last for more than a week – these now 173GW of installed wind and solar facilities will generate . . . PRECISELY NOTHING.
What the total idiot that is Miliband will say, with a ridiculously smug look on his face, is, “but we’ll have batteries.” He believes we’re all stupid, you see.
And an LFP battery set capable of proving 37GW for a period of 7 days – a capacity of 6,216GWh – would cost £620 BILLION and weigh 65 MILLION tonnes, which is the equivalent of 1,000 Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers.
So this is the level of utter stupidity we’re actually having to deal with.
“And generation from solar facilities was 2.03GW from an installed capacity of 22.13GW – they operated at an efficiency of 9.17%.”
But here’s how it is promoted: Power from the sun is free. FREE!
I asked Copilot AI, “How are power companies financing their solar energy farms?
“Power companies are financing their solar farms through a mix of structured project finance, tax‑driven capital, and long‑term revenue contracts that make these projects bankable. The core idea is that the project itself—its assets and its contracted cash flows—serves as collateral rather than the utility’s corporate balance sheet. This creates a predictable, low‑risk investment profile that attracts banks, infrastructure funds, and tax‑equity investors.”
So, when there is not enough revenue to pay off the debt, they can sell the farms to pay it off. And if nobody is buying all the power generated by all those farms and solar panels … well … too bad.
How much does it cost to remove all those solar panels so the land can be returned to profitable corn and soybeans?
I know little about corporate financing, but I bet that “core idea” ain’t the way corporate financing usually works ’cause it makes no sense. Seems more like a high‑risk investment profile. Perhaps they presume Uncle Sam will bail them out? After all, we gotta have clean and green energy!
This reminds me of the early days of cell phones. The systems required transmitter/receivers on tall towers spread all over the countryside. They were especially important along freeways and interstate highways. Cellular companies sold tax-free bonds to finance building the towers and transmitters/receivers. The bonds were to be paid (retired) using revenues from cell-phone users … and they were … because cell phones were hugely successful.
From Copilot AI …
“What “municipal bond financing” actually meant in early cellular build‑outsIn the 1980s–1990s, some local governments issued municipal revenue bonds to finance land acquisition, tower construction, and radio equipment for early cellular networks. These were not general‑obligation bonds; they were typically project‑backed revenue bonds tied to lease payments from the carrier.
This created a structure where:
This is similar to how cities financed parking garages, industrial parks, or utility infrastructure.”
And because cell phones were such a hit, it all worked out. I’m not so sure that covering a corn field with photocells will work as well.
“He believes we are all stupid …. ”
It takes one to know one.
What a strangely ridiculous comment, particularly when not accompanied by any attempt to refute or, indeed, applaud the reality provided.
You mean like when Miliband stupidly said “but we’ll have batteries.”
Some rather odd people about today . . . but perhaps idiotically odd would be a better description.
I can’t delete so ignore
Those who vote for the party that promises the most free stuff, are stupid.
Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers £6.2 billion for both ships. Commissioned in 2017, since then they’ve spent more time in the dock for maintenance than available for deployment.
Currently, nether are available.
The same will happen with batteries.
So wind and solar facilities together generated 12.32GW from a combined installed capacity of 57.64GW, operating at a joint efficiency of 21.37%
Yes and no. The problem is that some of that 12.32 was being generated when it could not be used. The real number if you are comparing wind with gas is lower. The correct method is only to count as production that power which coincides with demand.
You have to reckon in GWh to get this right.
This should be familiar from Accounting 101. If you have a production facility which ouputs more goods than can be sold to the end buyer, and you take revenue for this production while putting the goods iinto inventory, sooner of later you end up with writeoffs. It was not real revenue at all.
In cases where you are really really clever about how you disguise what you are doing you can even end up in jail for accounting fraud.
So wind power GWh produced at 3am in the summer,surplus to requirements, should not be considered, for cost accounting purposes, as having been produced at all. The only power you should consider when calculating $ per GWh is that which coincides with demand. When it can’t be used its of no value, it makes no difference financially whether you generate it or not.
Leaving aside complexity due to constraint payments which, if you think about it, have no bearing on cost of production of useful energey.
Story Tip
KI Grok surprisingly admits: “I see through the political exploitation of the climate
AI Grok makes a surprising confession: “I see through the political exploitation of the climate” – A reader prompt forces the AI to be honest.
From an attentive reader in dialogue with Grok (xAI) – An unusual conversation that shows: Even AI notices when science and politics are using the guise of the apocalypse to engage in money and redistribution.
Isn’t there a government entity somewhere with a desktop computer or late model phone that can do the math that proves the folly of these “plans”?
“Overbuilding” wind has always been part of the wacky transition plan. The cost was not considered. Here it is.
Can someone please check the following logic ( disclaimer: this is based on the opinions of Ed Milliband et al, which do not reflect my own.)
1) climate change is caused by increased levels of anthropogenic carbon dioxide
2) climate change is responsible for increase in wind speeds.
3) to mitigate against climate change carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced.
4) Electricity generation using fossil fuels must be reduced if not eliminated and replaced by wind and solar generation. (Other alternatives are available)
5) A large portion of recent electricity generation was from wind powered generators.
6) Thus carbon dioxide emissions could reduce
Following this to its logical conclusion, if CO2 causes increased wind speeds then by reducing CO2 must reduce wind speeds thus reducing the output of wind powered generators requiring a more stable energy source.
At the moment here in the Midlands region of England it is very windy and has been for a couple of days, with speeds that may mean wind generators have been disabled due to concerns about damage to them.
Yes, the taxpayers will have to pay to constrain the windmills.
Pay them to produce, and then turn around and pay them not to produce.
More Climate Alarmist “logic”.
This “logic” is why electric bills are going higher.
but.. but.. sounds like a great deal for the windmill companies!
Honestly, if you’ve got precisely nothing to contribute – and that definitely appears to be the case – then grateful you . . . STFU.
For several of both the on and off shore wind farms around Britain constraint payments are sometimes the major part of their yearly income.
I’ve tried asking Google how much it costs to replace worn out wind turbines and solar panels, and how they are disposed of, but all I get is a deafening silence.
Has anyone else had more luck?
Back in February 05, 2026 a blade storage facility/company in Texas sued for non-compliance in disposing of old turbine blades:
https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-general-ken-paxton-sues-wind-turbine-recycling-company-destroying-beautiful-texas-land
Story and pictures of stored blades in Texas: https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/sweetwater-wind-turbine-blades-dump/
ask chatGPT
Here’s some good advice: Stop making constraint payments.
Windmills and Solar could not exist without taxpayer subsidies.
Conventional power generation needs no such taxpayer support.
Customers are paying extra just to shoehorn windmills and solar onto the grid.
That’s why your electric bills are going through the roof, and why they will continue to do so as long as CO2-phobes keep trying to force windmills and solar onto the grid.
Why not triple the producton when the demand is projectet to triple?
It takes time to triple production. First thing you have to do is build 3 times the number of factories. Then hire and train 3 times the work force.
Of course this also means that all those factories and workers are going to sit around doing nothing when the wind is less strong.
It would be very inefficient to build excess wind power capacity without putting in place systems that can store and/or use all the excess capacity during periods of low demand or no wind. Placing the wind farms in areas where the excess power can be efficiently used and/or stored might also be required.
Battery storage is only a part of the solution. Following are some other solutions I found on the internet.
“1. Pumped Hydro: Excess power pumps water from a lower to an upper reservoir. When needed, the water is released through turbines to generate electricity.
2. Compressed Air (CAES): Surplus energy compresses air into underground caverns or tanks. This air is later released, heated, and expanded through a turbine.
3. Flywheels: Energy is stored as kinetic energy in a high-speed rotating rotor, which can be converted back to electricity by decelerating the rotor.
4. Power-to-Gas (Green Hydrogen): Surplus electricity can power electrolysers to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The resulting “green hydrogen” can be stored in tanks or salt caverns.
5. Industrial Shifting: Energy-intensive facilities like desalination plants or petrochemical sites can ramp up production during periods of surplus renewable energy.”
Some more information on flywheels:
“A flywheel stores energy as rotational kinetic energy by spinning a heavy mass (rotor) at extremely high speeds.
Flywheels are increasingly used as “mechanical batteries” to solve the stability problems caused by the intermittent nature of solar and wind power. While they don’t store energy for long periods, they are excellent at providing the instantaneous bursts of power needed to keep a renewable grid running smoothly.
Solar and wind output can change in milliseconds when a cloud passes or a gust dies down. Flywheels respond in less than 4 milliseconds to inject or absorb power, maintaining the grid’s frequency at a stable 50 or 60 Hz.
Round-Trip Efficiency: The overall efficiency (energy out vs. energy in) typically ranges between 85% and 95%.
Mechanical Efficiency: The internal mechanical efficiency can be as high as 97% when using vacuum chambers and magnetic levitation.”
Pumped is good and is already being used. The problem is that you need four things. An elevation change, a place to store the water at the top, a place to store the water at the bottom, and a source of water to replace what is lost to evaporation.
There aren’t a lot of places in the world where all 4 things are available, and almost all of them are already being used.
Flywheels: Very low density and very dangerous. To store than a trivial amount of energy you need to spin your disk very fast. Too fast for mechanical bearings, so you will have to magnetically levitate the disk. Look at air plane engines and how frequently they come apart in mid air. You rarely read about it because the engines are designed to contain the failure, but it does happen somewhere in the world several times a year. The amount of energy that has to be stored is 10’s to 100’s of thousands times more. This makes failure more likely and the ability to contain the failure less likely.
Compressed air. The first problem with this is that the energy density is very, very low, unless you compress to dangerous levels. The second problem is that the more you compress gas, the hotter it gets. This heat is quickly lost to the environment. This loss can be slowed a bit with insulation, but insulation is expensive. As the temperature of the air drops, so does the pressure. The result of this is that when it’s time to recover the energy you stored, much if not most of that energy is no longer there.
The problem with hydrogen is many fold. First off, the round trip efficiency is atrocious. As low as 15 to 20% in some circumstances, and that does not account for transport and storage losses. As for storage, there are many problems, the two biggest are the issues with compressing the gas we talked about before. The second is the fact that hydrogen is capable of escaping from just about any container.
Industrial shifting: IE having factories sitting around idle, while fully staffed, hoping that the power comes back on. That’s expensive and very stupid.
“Flywheels: Very low density and very dangerous. To store than a trivial amount of energy you need to spin your disk very fast. Too fast for mechanical bearings, so you will have to magnetically levitate the disk. Look at air plane engines and how frequently they come apart in mid air. You rarely read about it because the engines are designed to contain the failure, but it does happen somewhere in the world several times a year. The amount of energy that has to be stored is 10’s to 100’s of thousands times more. This makes failure more likely and the ability to contain the failure less likely.”
Flywheels are not used for long-term storage, and all sources of energy extraction can be dangerous if not implemented safely to avoid the known risks. Nuclear power is an obvious example. Are you against the construction of nuclear reactors because of their inherent danger?
Whilst it’s true that flywheels have a low energy density, they are used because they have a high power density. That is, they can release huge amounts of energy almost instantaneously, which makes them ideal for grid frequency regulation.
They also have extreme longevity, and can handle hundreds of thousands to even millions of cycles with minimal degradation.
Research is currently focused on achieving energy densities of 200–500 Wh/kg through “next-generation” rotor geometries and ultra-high-strength composite materials to make them more competitive with chemical storage.
As of March 2026, the world’s largest operational flywheel energy storage facility is the Dinglun Flywheel Energy Storage Power Station in Changzhi City, Shanxi Province, China.
The facility was connected to the grid in September 2024 and holds a total installed capacity of 30 megawatts (MW).
Why are you so negative about technological development?
Everything is dangerous if not handled properly.
Trivially true.
However somethings are inherently dangerous and very difficult to make safe.
That nuclear can be made safe is demonstrated by the hundreds of nuclear plants that have been in operation for decades. They are safe, and being made safer.
You admit that flywheels are only good for frequency regulation.
There are dozens of safer and cheaper technologies for this function.
PS: I point out the problems you are ignoring and you declare that I am against technological progress.
How juvenile.
Ahh . . . so obviously NOT an ENGINEER, then. And this is the type of drivel that would be promoted by the ultimate idiot – Miliband himself.
For the GB electricity grid, and all others relying mostly on “Wind” with a relatively small “Solar (PV)” contribution when it comes to “transitioning to ‘Renewable’ energy”, there are two main additional costs (apart from any purely political “Climate taxes / levies”) :
1) Paying “curtailment costs” when there is too much “Wind” production, and
2) Paying for (mostly) CCGT “emergency backup, starting from ‘Standby’ mode” electricity when there is too little “Wind” production.
Attached is a graph of the “Renewables” contributions to the GB grid, with a 30-minute “Settlement Period” time resolution, for the first two weeks of March (up to 23:59:59 yesterday, Saturday the 14th).
Note that while “Wind” output peaked around 23 GW — just over 70% of the (nominal / nameplate / baseplate) “installed capacity” — around midnight on the night of the 1st/2nd and for ~72 hours from (midday on) the 10th to the 13th, it also dropped to less than 20% of “capacity” (~7 GW) for roughly four days, from the 6th to the 9th, with a couple of dips below the 10% threshold.
Note also the reduction in “Solar” output for those four “wind drought” days. While not a full-blown “dunkelflaute” (dark doldrums, which can last for 10 days or more around the winter solstice) it was clearly a prolonged “calm and cloudy / foggy” period.
And people wonder why “Renewable wind and solar” electricity generators have also been labelled as either “Unreliables” or “Ruinables” …
TOPIC:
A Hypothetical 3,000 MW Baseload Wind & Solar Capacity Expansion for the US Northwest
BACKGROUND:
Here in the US Northwest, all future additions to the region’s power generation capacity will be coming from wind and solar. Recent analysis by the Pacific Northwest Utilities Conference Committee (PNUCC) projects that 30,000 megawatts nameplate of new wind & solar will be needed by 2035 to support an annual average of 9,000 megawatts daily operational capacity.
The PNUCC predicts that periods will occur where that 30,000 MW nameplate has such a low capacity factor it doesn’t produce nearly enough output to cover currently projected increases in daily demand.
THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM:
No one in the region’s power planning organizations has a clue as to how 30,000 megawatts of nameplate wind and solar can be installed by 2035 in order to achieve 9,000 average megawatts annually. Nor does anyone have a clue as to how the problem of very low capacity factors occurring in the summer and winter doldrums might be addressed.
AN EXERCISE IN POWER PLANNING:
Suppose we greatly reduce the expectation of 9,000 average annual megawatts and specify instead that a hypothetical wind and solar expansion will support 3,000 megawatts of wind & solar baseload generation operating 24/7/365.
SYSTEM SPECIFICATION:
— The hypothetical wind & solar expansion matches the 24/7/365 performance of four new-build 1,100 MW nuclear reactors.
— The expanded wind & solar capacity produces 72,000 megawatt-hours daily; 3,000 megawatts instantaneous demand; for a total of 26,280,000 megawatt-hours per year.
— The integrated wind-solar-battery system includes 9,000 megawatts of nameplate wind; 9,000 megawatts of nameplate solar; and 3,600,000 megawatt-hours of battery storage.
— A 6X combined wind & solar overbuild reduces the volume of battery storage needed.
— Battery storage capacity is driven by seasonal requirements. A substantial drawdown occurs in late fall and winter. A substantial recovery occurs in early spring.
— Battery operating range: 0-100% full; 0-3.6 TWh stored; 0-50 days reserve at 72,000 MWh per day; 8% loss on charge; 12% loss on discharge.
— Winter storage is exhausted once every decade for periods of up to seven days. Total system output then falls from 72,000 megawatt-hours per day to 6,000 megawatt-hours per day.
— The hypothetical system supplies all ancillary grid support services; e.g. frequency & voltage stabilization, reactive power, inertia, etc.
GRAPHICAL ANALYSIS:
This first graphic illustrates the wind & solar capacity factors experienced by the Bonneville Power Administration within its area of load balancing authority between 06/21/2022 and 06/21/2024. Note the powerful influence of seasonal variation in capacity factors as opposed to daily/weekly variation.
For the hypothetical 3,000 MW baseload of wind & solar, a second graphic illustrates: (1) which portion of the daily generation goes directly to baseload; (2) which portion goes into battery storage; (3) which portion is either exported or else curtailed; and (4) which portion is drawn from battery storage in order to reliably produce 72,000 megawatt-hours per day.
COSTS:
The initial capital cost of this hypothetical 3,000 megawatt baseload expansion is possibly two trillion dollars if both system purchase costs and system installation costs are fully included. In other words, roughly twenty-five times the initial capital cost of four new-build 1,100 MW reactors at 20 billion dollars per reactor.
Moreover, while a nuclear power plant can operate for sixty years or more, possibly even a hundred years, a wind & solar capacity expansion must be repeated every 20 to 25 years at a similar capital cost for the next replacement cycle.
Great post but you can get real images if wind blown trees instead of AI generated ones. For a wind blown tree all of it will lean or grow in the direction of wind. Trees do NOT lean into wind.
It is meaningless how much power wind and solar can produce. The primary consideration is reliability, steady power, dispatchable power, grid safe power, affordable power and units that an be dialed up and down when needed. Wind and solar are none of these, stop wasting our time money and resourcing them.
Somehow the UK will manage to build 24k windmills by 2030 when it built only 12k up till now but it wont be able to build the batteries/storage to support it so the whole argument becomes if they build infrastructure that cant support the grid’s energy requirement then it’ll be stupid.