More money leaves the room. Last week David Cameron said the UK needed to get rid of all that green crap (or double-speak words to that effect). The message, confounded as it is, may be getting through.
(Reuters) – German utility RWE has scrapped plans to build one of the world’s largest offshore wind parks in Britain, as soaring gas and electricity prices fuel uncertainty over the UK government’s commitment to renewable energy subsidies.
[Bloomberg] RWE’s renewable-energy unit has decided to drop a 4.5 billion-pound ($7.3 billion) offshore wind project in the U.K. because engineering challenges made it too expensive.
RWE says that it’s because of engineering challenges, but we could assume they didn’t suddenly discover how deep the water was this week.
[Bloomberg] “At the current time, it is not viable for RWE to continue” the Atlantic Array farm because of deep waters and adverse seabed conditions, RWE Innogy said in a statement on its website. The 278-turbine project in the Bristol Channel can’t be justified under “current market conditions,” it said.
Engineering challenges can usually be fixed with money. But translate “current market conditions” and we see that it was really a money challenge: not enough taxpayer money to line the deep sea.
While this development (or non-development as it happens) is good news for the people of the British Isles, they are still paying for all the other projects that should have been canceled.
“The average household power bill has risen 68 percent since 2008…”
In response Ed Milliband (Opposition leader) did what any big-government anti-free-market politician would do. After big-government has spent years commanding that energy should be unaffordable (so we’d use less), his solution is that governments should also command the price to stay the same. It’s fairies in the garden stuff: the hunt for the mythical free lunch, the instant fix, the Stalin solution. (Scarily, 4 out of 5 voters like it).
When there is no free market, a price freeze means a capital freeze. So be it:
[Guardian] Peter Atherton, a leading energy analyst, warned last week that investment in power generation was “killed stone dead” until the next election by Ed Miliband‘s call for a price freeze and government delays in introducing promised electricity market reform.
Reality bites. Note the implication, and the language:
But the pullout will also raise concerns about the investment landscape in Britain for energy companies such as RWE, which have been under ferocious attack by politicians, regulator and the public.
What the green market calls a ferocious attack is normally called competition.
RWE indicated that the government might have to raise green subsidies – and thus increase bills or the burden on the taxpayer – after admitting that technical difficulties had pushed the price up so far that it could not be justified under the current subsidy regime.
It’s not the only project on the slide.
But RWE has already pulled out of a £350m nuclear-power project, is selling its DEA North Sea oil business and last week disposed of part of its UK gas and electricity supply arm. Developers have been warning for some time that they would need more subsidies from the government if ministers were to realise low-carbon energy targets
When it costs too much, the answer is more subsidies.
When the subsidies don’t come:
Renewable energy companies have promised to try to reduce offshore wind costs by 30% through a raft of measures as government ministers are under pressure to reduce public subsidies.
If they can reduce costs by 30% now, why not do it before? Oh wait…
At last estimate a billion dollars a day was being poured into “climate” investments. Now, it’s $7billion less.
Read more at the Guardian.
h/t Rereke :- )
Apart from no longer burdening the UK consumer with even more expensive and unreliable electricity generating capacity, there are the added benefits of not having this ugly eyesore not polluting the horizon and many tens of thousands of sea birds will now be able to live out their natural life spans.
Every time one of these economic monstrosities is built, the cost of electricity goes up both directly and indirectly – the former for obvious reasons and the latter for less obvious ones. The latter being that the rest of the natural grid becomes more inefficient, as balancing the sources of power becomes ever more difficult. More and more often conventional and ‘green’ energy producers are now being told to switch off power production, for which they quite reasonably want to be paid.
Potential new investors in the UK’s energy sector look at the situation and say: “Whoa, this is insane, my financial performance depends on how well the wind is blowing, so I am not going in there without a guaranteed consistent offtake and high prices.” The latest nuclear deal is a classic case in point.
Ed Milliband’s stupid populist policy statement of a price freeze only helped to put the UK’s future energy security in jeopardy – even the Guardian realises that!!!
I like the idea, which seems to be gaining traction, that green energy suppliers would have to guarantee the amount of electricity they would be providing the next day, or face heavy fines. This would be a great way to control electricity prices and help ensure security of future supplies. Unfortunately, this is a concept that will be hard to grasp for the man in the street, who seems to prefer much simpler, populist, ideas, regardless of the consequences.
510
RedEd’s statement was probably the final nail in the coffin of this ridiculous project. Watching water melons commit self-inflicted injuries gives me a warm feeling. Ed has by his own action given fracking a monumental boost. Lovely!
390
Peter,
Without revealing sources, “Forward Supply Projection,” is being seriously considered.
As I understand the draft proposal, average base load can be calculated reasonably accurately from historical and demographic data, and renewable suppliers are expected to provide a fixed portion of that, at a low risk price. On top of that, they will be expected to commit to providing a portion of the variable load, for which they will get a higher price to offset the increased risk.
But, should they not be able to meet either commitment, for whatever reason, then they will be penalised for the shortfall.
Whether this proposal actually goes anywhere, is anybody’s guess, but there is a lot of teeth gnashing going on.
230
And as an unintended cultural consequence, let me predict here that we will witness the emergence of Western ‘wind dancing’.
Afterall, if the Zephyr can only oblige us with a adequate blow-job 17% (mean) of the time, who is going to erect enough wind turbines that are sufficiently distributed to reliably provide some small fraction of base load at sensible pricing, to alleviate a non-problem?
It’s definitely the silly season.
171
But wind energy is free energy, ask any greeny 🙂
190
I am a member of Slay the Array. The application was fatally flawed from the beginning, but the developer ignored all information he was provided with. He has wasted millions on the project. But hey-ho, never mind, the costs will be passed on by German company RWE to consumers via their electricity bills. What are a few thousand more people in fuel poverty? What does it matter to big green if there are a few thousand more excess winter fule deaths due to people not being able to heat their homes?
140
From:http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/benedictbrogan/100247632/trading-gimmicks-with-labour-wont-keep-britains-lights-on/
The reality is that tactics are being adopted to force apparatchiks in UK’s DECC, which is controlled by the Renewables’ and Carbon trading Corporations, to think of something else to reduce fossil fuel use than the windmills plus diesel backup (‘STOR’), which makes new wind capacity produce as much CO2 as the old coal fired power stations they are supposed to replace.
The problem is the windmills are a Marxist-Leniinist replacement for the Swastika, a symbol of totalitarian State control to subjugate the proles and enrich the elite who own the renewables’ corporations, who own the State. Think of them as a new version of the Easter Iisland Statues. Piers Corbyn calls them giant prayer wheels, but I prefer Swastika.
So, with the foreign Power giants and Siemens not able to finance those fossil fuel guzzling monstrosities, the apparatchiks won’t be able to force through the M-L plan and instead will have to adopt real fuel saving technologies, e.g. domestic fuels cells. The Power Corporations don’t want this because the Mafia then ceases to ration power by the grid so can’t rip off the customers.
This is the time for popular revolution, to throw off the tyranny of the windmills, the Corporations and their Marxist-Leninist version of Mussolini’s Fascism: control by the Corporations and the NGOs, both run by the public school educated elite to get rich from fake IPCC science.
70
RWE is under considerable pressure in it’s home market Germany where it has to compete against massively subsidized “green” energy itself. During peak times wind and/or solar power can be so abundant that it is given away for free (with the consumers picking up the different to the guaranteed price) or even goes negative (given to Austria or Poland who get paid to dispose of it in their system).
140
Not entirely correct. The “green energy” producers get a pre-arranged rate that’s quite generous; several times the cost of putting coal and nuclear-sourced electricity on the grid. In fact, if their renewable energy is “rejected” by the grid and they are ordered off the grid, they are compensated for the notional loss of income.
Energy production from other sources has to be priced to be accepted onto the grid; which ends up being negative if there’s a lot of wind for a few hours on a sunny day. The cummulative peak (nameplate) capacity of wind+solar in Germany is over 60GW; 10 GW higher than the base-load.
The country has painted itself into an energy corner; and the paint won’t dry until 2025.
100
Exactly the same in Ontario, Canada. With the wind and solar producers given a mandated priority and a huge feed-in tariff, the provincial grid operator must dump cheap nuclear and hydroelectric generated electricity to New York State at a loss.
10
And meanwhile, Tassie aims at 100% renewables.
http://australianclimatemadness.com/2013/11/26/tasmanian-turkeys-vote-for-christmas/
Go Tassie, great idea for a place that is already pretty much a basketcase.
At least they have the hydro dams that Bob Brown fought so hard against !
282
Actually its my understanding that when we finished Musselroe, Tasmania had 100% renewable capacity. Im not sure if thats true because I couldnt be bothered researching it lol (its like Dawkins says about reading the bible, why bother…) But by far and away the majority of Tassy’s day to day power comes from Bell Bay… at least thats what Im told by industry insiders.
30
Tassie is probably the one place that could get away with it.
Massive rainfall and the right topology for hydro on the west coast, also a west coast that is basically unpopulated and has pretty constant winds.
Still.. the fact that they will have to apply more green tape, shows that it is pretty borderline.
101
ps, and their reliance on the Bass-link brown coal for that little extra top-up must annoy the greens.
What they REALLY need is another BIG DAM.. maybe on the Franklin River. 😉
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I’d like to see Bob Brown see that as a consequence of his religion.
70
Oh thats so spot on Bernd and your probably closer to the truth than anyone realises. The company i work for now builds major irrigation infrastructure, our biggest dams and pipe systems usually feature a hydro element. We are gradually working our way around the state (Tassie) and if our success in getting environmental approvals for our projects is anything to go by, no particular area would be off limits to us.
I love a good “ultimate irony” and that would be a RIPPER!
40
Population growth is going to force it some time in the future.
Although at the current , a LONG time in the future 😉
I’ll be heading to Hobart over Xmas, hope the climate stays nice.
30
.
To fully appreciate Hobart, you have to visit in summer,
which occurs on or around the 12th of February each year.
80
At what time MV?
70
.
Between 11.00am and 2.00pm.
You don’t need an appointment.
70
I beg to differ, Andy. The capacity of Bass Link is 500 MW going North, and a Southern flow hasn’t been the case for a coon’s age.
01
really ??
http://www.dier.tas.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/85534/Tasmanian_Electricity_Supply_by_Source_Graph_-_2000_to_2012.pdf
What’s that purple bit at the top then ???
00
Around 2007-2009, the Hydro dams started to get a bit low.
Hydro doesn’t work without water, and water relies on rain.
If you don’t get good rain for a while, you don’t get hydro power.
Its only the west coast rains and terrain, and its smallish (and not really growing much) population that allows Tasmania to use mostly hydro, and even export a bit.
A few bad years of rain, and that Bass-Link from Victoria’s brown coal will get used overtime.
If hydro was “enough”, would they really be wasting money they don’t have on wind farms? Would they really need to put the whole government on an austerity drive?
No.. at the moment it is just about at the balance point. If the population was to actually start increasing, they would have problems.
(but why would anyone want to go and live in Tassie permanently, unless they had a guaranteed job)
00
If you could see it for 2013 Andy you would agree with me.
00
Your right Rod. One of our projects is at Arthur’s Lake. It was tipped to spill some time this week for the first time since 1964. The hydro water supply statewide is at its highest level in many years.
00
Actually SG,
If you use TonyOZ’s little wind page http://windfarmperformance.info/?date=2013-11-26
Switch off “All” and everything except the two Tassie wind farms, you will see that Musselroe doesn’t seem to be doing much at all !! WOEFUL, would be my engineering description !!
Woolnorth looks like it doing it’s job though.
20
But yesterday they were both doing something…
But I’m really glad I don’t have to RELY on that sort of power fluctuation !!!
10
Funny you should say that, I caught up with a mate who is still on the farm as a technician, he hinted at the fact that there were “issues” so I guess he wasnt whistling dixie. He was saying that AEMO were asking them to keep “some of” the turbines “off the grid for now”. No further details.
10
AEMO site again
Tasmania’s power demands run at about 900 Mw’s
Tasmania’s two wind farms plated capacity so allow for a capacity factor of say 30% of plated capacity in Tassie’s windier environment closer to the roaring forties.
Musselroe @168 Mw’s plated capacity
Woolnorth @ 140 Mw’s plated capacity
Total Tasmanian wind farm plated capacity = 308 Mw’s x 30% capacity factor and Tassies wind farms should on this basis provide an average of about a 100 Mw’s or about 11% average of Tassie’s power demands
Cost to achieve this wind power contribution to Tassies grid; somewhere north of $600 million.
40
Hydro Tas has an installed capacity of 2421 MW from 30 hydro-electric power stations.
As with any other renewable, however, and Tony from Oz repeatedly points out, that means SFA when there is a lack of water.
Nearly half of this capacity is from ‘run-of-river’ power stations, with no reservoir. They only operate after considerable rainfall. Nevertheless, the generation from three big lakes are able to operate continuously, and with other reservoir supplied stations hydro power can supply the State’s needs which fluctuate from roughly 1350 to 950 MW depending on the season and time of day. Over the past several months, unusually high rainfall resulted in:
a) The run-of-river facilities run, since with not reservoir capacity the water simply spills unless the plant is generating.
b) The reservoirs are generally full, with the exception of Lake Gordon, Arthur Lake and Great Lake, whose levels have been dragged down to ‘make hay while the sun shines’ (or the rain falls) and sell electricity into the national grid through the Bass link into Victoria where in essence it attracts a premium because no tax on air must be paid.
c) Hydro Tas has generated a great deal of revenue through this artificial pricing arrangement, for the most part at the expense of electricity consumers on the mainland.
Tamar Valley power station is in reality two power stations. It has a 208 MW combined cycle plant and 180 MW of simple cycle peaking plant. Since commissioning in 2009 the combined cycle plant ran continuously (apart from annual maintenance) until Hydro Tasmania acquired the asset from Aurora Energy. Since mid July it has been temporarily idle while the three big lakes have been dragged down to approximately 15 meters below full. This has maximised revenue over the winter, (both Hydro Tas and Aurora are State owned SOE’s and pay dividends to the State) but as the rain is seasonal, and the lake levels are in decline again, Tamar Valley will soon be needed again.
Since electricity is a non-differentiated commodity (unless artificially differentiated by a tax on air) it is indeed impossible to determine whether 208 MW is exported or whether it is used domestically and an equal amount of hydro power is exported.
Tasmania has traditionally cycled from periods of plentiful rainfall to drought and back again, so a thermal generation facility is an insurance policy which pays benefits during a drought. It is quite likely that if the market had not been distorted by the tax on air, REC’s, RET, etc, that the three large lakes would be as full as the smaller lakes. Had TVPS been in operation for the last five months, it would have supplied about 750 GWH into the grid, which is equivalent to several meters of lake levels at least. (In 2011 9273 GWH was derived from hydro) Full reservoirs are also an insurance policy which pay out at the beginning of a drought, but the situation is becomes complicated when the run-of-river-stations are taken into account.
Hydro also supplied 15GWH from diesel and 5 GWH from wind in 2011. The Musselroe Bay eagle slayers have only recently been commissioned, so they don’t show up in the stats.
00
Oh sorry… and also the power might be green, but its also gold.
http://www.theadvocate.com.au/story/1934324/high-aurora-bills-hurting-tasmanians/?cs=87
And not just for Tassie
http://www.energymatters.com.au/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=4048
I guess from the Greens perspective though this is a win win… A bunch of old folks who cant afford to run their air conditioners will keel over this summer and that both lowers the population of filthy humans as well as creating some nice confected statistic opportunities about heat waves threatening the lives of Australians…. its a gift for the deluded and the stupid, no doubt.
200
Oh and sorry again (need to read before I post for a change)
Tony will love the fact that SA has the biggest price issues. Good ol renewables, proving beyond any shadow of a doubt that profits from tax payer funded wind farms with low running costs, will NEVER be passed on to consumers as savings.
You have to admit, its pretty amusing to see the stupidity unfolding so perfectly from the POV of those of us who saw this coming.
130
Subsidies for ALL forms of “clean” power MUST be scrapped!
They should either live or die on their own merit NOT on our (taxpayers) money.
The day WILL come when someone discovers something that blows all these renewable energy forms out of the water so to speak and they will then fall over like a house of cards.
Maybe it will be LENR – maybe not – but it WILL happen.
Cheers,
230
Wind & solar projects are not so much renewable as disposable.
180
Renewable Energy is just like a high maintenance girlfriend, sure she looked attractive at the start with some potential of a good future but after years of increased money demands, constant whinging, lack of performance and the effects of time well anyone but a Masochist would endure her behavior any longer.
190
Ah, Memories …
90
Been there… done that !! 🙂
110
Having spent much time hiking in sight of windfarms, especially in Spain, I’m guessing that “turbine free” will soon become a selling point for tourist destinations. Expect the prissy Guardian to take a lead against wind power, having been its most eager promoter – back before it realised that wind turbines gobble up birdlife and landscapes as well as Other People’s Money.
At least England’s “dark satanic mills” did a bloody job of work.
140
“Dark satanic mills” have been replaced by dark satanic windmills.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
60
Just a comment I made on Bolt’s site that I’m sure won’t get up.
With the realisation that >31,000 excess pensioners died last year in England and Wales due to the cold related illnesses due to energy poverty, it occurs to me that the UK government could elect to give a rebate to wind farm operators for every pensioner killed, as a way of repaying them for the reduction of this prospective burden on the economy.
After all, the government really should give credit where it is due.
90
The wind farm was going to provide up to 1.2GW peak power. At $7.3B price tag, that comes to $6.08/Watt peak. This is much higher than wind experts predicted for offshore wind farms. In addition, the average capacity factor of wind in the UK in 2012 was 20710GWhr/8.87GW/8760= 0.27, so the cost per average Watt is $6.08/0.27 = $22.50/Watt. This is far more expensive than even nuclear power.
100
Chris,
It does not matter how much it costs. What matters is the profits. In the wonderful world of UK’s renewables, the generated electricity from offshore wind farms attracts Renewables Obligation (RO) of twice the onshore rates. When I looked at this last year, the RO would have been up to £90 MwH, in addition to the wholesale price of around £47 MwH. The Atlantic Array could have generated revenues of £4.3bn in the first 10 years.
It is the political situation what killed it off – namely the Labour party threatening price controls.
70
Or perhaps the prospect that having bet the farm, the farm would not last more than 10 years? There is a reason lighthouses at sea are not built from steel on concrete. I understand there are legal disputes about the build quality of farms in arbitration – keeping them out of the courts, and away from the public gaze.
70
Mbc – Are you suggesting that Red Ed did something right – by accident? 😉
10
He has not done anything right at all. Freezing prices will simply mean that electricity will only be supplied at a loss. We would end up with the renationalisation of electricity generation industry. We would have a situation like in Hayek’s Road to Serfdom.
1. The government has rigged the market to “combat climate change”. Hugely expensive renewables are given preference over fossil fuels.
2. This creates not only larger nominal profits, but also larger returns on sales. The two causes I explained here.
3. This is blamed purely on the evil capitalists, when the fault is the government.
4. Politicians calling for price controls are elected to office.
5. The price controls will lead to a wiping out of investment. There are power cuts.
6. The Government takes over the electricity industry in the “National Interest.”
The difference with “Road to Serfdom” was that in 1944 Hayek was concerned with wartime planning. See a short cartoon version here.
10
Despite all this, the idiotic CAGW due to CO2 story remains.
Until a few politicians actually look into the whole business and think for themselves instead of following the ‘scientists say’ mantra, then come clean and have the guts to say they don’t believe a word of it, we won’t be seeing the last of the turbines.
110
Governments need to demand reliable evidence and think critically before signing their people up to an enormous and ongoing debt and loss of sovereignty based on a politically-organised ‘consensus’. The mainstay of this consensus being easily-manipulated, rubbery computer projections.
Has the world gone mad?
60
Wind work was nice while it lasted, but all stupid things must come to an end.
I was roundly laughed at within the industry (Mr nutty denialist, like the creepy uncle of the family)in 2009 when I said 2010-2012 will be the period with the most turbine construction in Australian history before or since.
Right now I reckon Im looking pretty good on that one. Probably explains why no one was prepared to take the bets I was offering…. shame, Im not above fleecing fools.
160
It was only a matter of time before economic common sense kicks in. I bet the real reason they discontinued with he project is because the UK government is now fearing a revolt by the public if electricity prices keep sky rocketing. It may be too late already. Goes to show our leaders are too slow to serve the public, which is supposed to be their prime directive. It then goes to show we in Australia have little to crow about given the recent polls with the Libs only marginally ahead. Perhaps we need our electricity prices to go much higher before the public finally understands that the “environmental” movement that’s poisoned both major parties is evil and must be destroyed and replaced with a people friendly one.
90
A 4% lead in the polls and ninety seats in the Lower House is hardly marginal.
Yes, we would like to see the green rubbish dropped ASAP but unfortunately it will take some time to achieve.
Accidentally phoned a MP yesterday, we chatted about stuff for an hour or so. The last lot left a mess, after the repeal of the carbon tax the other rubbish will be methodically dismantled.
Our fiscal position is a lot worse than we were led to believe and there is no money so programmes and certain departments/qangos will have to have their funding reduced or better.
Don’t need to be Nostradamus to know which qango is on top of the list for the Commission of Audit, eh?
80
I agree it’s not marginal in the usual sense but in my mind it is because the recent massive defeat of Labor and I would have thought the public would still reject Labor by a much wider margin; something align the lines of what happened in Canada. If the public were really aware of how disgusting Labor was and still is, the polls should be something like 75/25 even if it’s only for a short period. Given the current readings I’m saddened that Australians are still too gullible to the ALP. Perhaps it’s a reflection of the fact we haven’t suffered as much as other countries, and so we need more punishment.
50
Any punishment we endure from here will be portrayed by the media as by the hand of the LNP. Quiet progress is what we need from now on.
20
That is true. However, I’m not under any illusion that the LNP are perfect. They too will make some bad moves albeit nowhere near as bad as the ALP+Greens. As far as I’m concerned the ALP+Greens are deadly poison to our society. I only wished more people realised that.
30
Agreed, Would be happy for Greens to perish in the wilderness, living by example and the ALP to never have enough funding to even launch a serious threat through reckless waste within the party.
” I only wished more people realised that.” – Just made me think, if kids even played board games any more, they should make Greenie/socialist type of Monopoly. Teach them young how damaging it is. That’ll learn ’em. or maybe ‘Game of (socialist) Life’.
20
RWE’s announcement stated
One would have thought that RWE could have diverted a few quid of their multi-million pound publicity campaign to send a couple of blokes in a rowing boat to check the depth and the tides. Even a few hours sat by the harbour in Ilfracombe (preferably with a cold beer or two) would demonstrate that the Bristol Channel has one of the largest tidal ranges on earth.
For me, it saves the view from one of my favourite places – Lundy Island,
80
“The average (UK) household power bill has risen 68 percent since 2008…”
And? So? In roughly the same time frame our NSW power prices have risen ~ 80%. Whilst politicians fart around at the edges of the problem using weasel words, natural resources free
S Korea enjoys power costs which are ~ one third (yes 1/3) of what we pay. When I last checked Korean price per Kilowatt hour was 10 cents.
Meantime, shock horror, jobs are going overseas and supposedly poorer citizens cannot afford to keep warm. 2 + 2 is apparently too difficult an equation for our elected representatives in Canberra, Macquarie St etc..
I’ll keep saying it till I shuffle off this cooling mortal coil: affordable power should be in the same democratic basket of entitlements as education and health care. Anything less is unacceptable.
120
Talking of solar power, check out the amazing NASA time-lapse video of comet ISON racing towards the sun ahead of spectacular meltdown this week.
Now that is solar power!
10
Is this how planets are born? 🙂
00
But the pullout will also raise concerns about the investment landscape…
Interesting focus of concern.
10
Maybe we can actually get back to the state of affairs where a farm actually grows something — like maybe food in one form or another?
80
Oh what irony! The biggest potential offshore wind farm on the planet killed of by the political uncertainties created by Labour Leader Ed Miliband saying that he would freeze energy prices. That same Ed Miliband as Climate Change Minister before the Copenhagen summit in 2009 said that he would not let a few “deniers”
The year before he oversaw the passage of the Climate Change Act 2008, which ensured the double-digit annual electricity price rises that will continue for years to come. This will also ensure increased nominal profits for the energy companies, even before the anti-competition issues, as I explained yesterday.
When the entirely predictable consequence of the Climate Change Act reduces the living standards of the poorest voters – the bedrock of the Labour vote – Ed Miliband about-faces and blames the energy companies. By Ed the Climate Change Minister’s standards, Ed the wannabe Prime Minister has sacrificed future generations for personal and party ambitions. And you thought the Australian Labor Party was hypocritical!
140
Also, the vast majority of MPs voted in the ridiculous Climate Change Act.
I wrote to mine pointing out the lack of warming over the last 17 years (enclosing plenty of figures to back this up) and the increase in CO2 of about 10% over that time (with the actual values enclosed). I suggested that it was time to review the policy on wind turbines.
I sent the letter to the Houses of Parliament on August 3rd, and still haven’t had the courtesy of a reply. The MP in question is a ‘greenie’, so the lack of a response comes as no surprise.
30
It is unfortunate that your MP ignores your letters. My MP does me the courtesy of a reply, even if it is a standard one. This despite being a Lib-Dem, who has a faded certificate on constituency office window saying he voted for the Climate Change Act 2008.
Another way of contacting your MP is through http://www.theyworkforyou.com/
Use this and after two weeks you are emailed to ask if they responded – and the site reports the statistics. Just like they keep statistics on voting record and attendance.
00
can’t recall this being posted:
6 Nov: UK Telegraph: Henry Samuel: French couple win legal battle to take down wind farms spoiling their view
A couple in northern France has won a legal battle to have 10 wind turbines taken down because they spoil the “bucolic and rustic” view from their 18th century chateau
The ruling is seen as a major victory for guardians of French heritage and has sent alarm bells ringing throughout the country’s wind farm industry. It is the first time a court has ordered operating wind turbines to be dismantled.
When Erik Wallecan, a retired vet from Belgium, and his wife Ingrid, bought the Chateau de Flers in the Pas-de-Calais in 1996, it was a dream come true. With the chateau in a state of disrepair, they spent a decade restoring the listed building with 42 acres of land to its former glory. They then set about transforming part of the building into a guesthouse.
In 2007, they were horrified to discover that their view had been blighted by the construction of 10 wind turbines each 360ft high…
Furious, the couple took the turbine operators, La Compagnie du Vent (The Wind Company), a subsidiary of the energy giant GDF Suez, to court…
Judges in Montpellier ruled that the turbines’ location blighted the countryside, causing the “total disfigurement of a bucolic and rustic landscape”. Besides the turbines “spoiling the view”, the judges also cited the “groaning and whistling” and “unsightliness of white and red flashing lights”.
The company was ordered to pay the Wallecans €37,500 (£31,500) in damages and to remove the wind farm within four months or face a fine of €500 per day per turbine.
The turbines remain in place pending an appeal, but their critics say the ruling still heralds a historic victory…
“People are often too scared to take action and suffer in silence,” said Philippe Bodereau, Mr Wallecan’s lawyer. “Today we are saying non: justice has been done and this shows all those who suffer wind farms with a sense of powerlessness that the fight is not vain, that one can have one’s life respected — one’s right to peace.”
The ruling follows a series of high profile campaigns against wind farms in France. In August, a French court banned a local council from erecting turbines near the Mont Saint Michel abbey island after Unesco warned they could cost France’s most visited provincial tourist site its World Heritage status.
A plan to build a vast offshore wind farm within view of several Normandy D-Day beaches was recently condemned as “an insult to the memory of the thousands who died there”. The government has insisted the project will go ahead.
Last year, villagers in Ferreières-Poussarou in the Hérault department, southwestern France, took their mayor hostage for a day and a night after learning of his plans to build 10 new turbines.
Local authorities say such farms provide a welcome financial boost.
Jean-Luc Faÿ, head of a group of villages including the chateau, said each turbine represented €12,000 a year for the community, which has helped fund a swimming pool and sports hall. “Due to two people, there is a knife under the throat of an area of 6,700 inhabitants,” he said.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/10431598/French-couple-win-legal-battle-to-take-down-wind-farms-spoiling-their-view.html
60
Nice example of wind power in action right here in Australia yesterday Nov 26th.
The total of all Australian wind farm plated output capacity is 2660 Mw’s
Eastern Australian power demand covering the same regions where wind also supplies power to from 2 pm to 4 pm [ 1400 to 1600 hs ] was around 23,000 Mw’s
So again theoretically at full plated capacity which is what the cost of wind turbines is based on , eastern Australian wind farms should be able to supply about 11.5% of the mid day demand.
At the accepted average capacity factor of about roughly 25%, [ German land based wind farms average 18% capacity factor ] wind farms in eastern Australia should still be able to supply about 670 Mw’s or nearly 3% of the mid arvo demand
The wind generators, all of them, 2660 Mw’s generating worth $5.5 billion to install, yesterday at their minimum output were producing a miserable [ to be polite] 150 >160 Mw’s total
Or to put it slightly differently, at around a very rough average cost of $2 million a Mw [ $1.5 > $2.5 million per installed Mw. Never mentioned is that the consumers pay the extra millions for the grid extensions to tap the wind turbine farm’s power ] of installed wind power, some 5.5 billion dollars worth of wind turbine capacity, for the peak eastern Australian business hours period of 2 pm to 4 pm on Nov 26th was generating just 6% of their claimed generating capacity or just 0.7% of the eastern Australian demand of around 23,000Mw’s during that same 2 hour period.
[ For clarity 0.7% is less than three quarters of one percent ]
For that decidedly miserable contribution of totally unpredictable, unreliable, unneeded, unsustainable and totally ineffective contribution to our power needs by the wind power industry which was entirely created and built to supposedly mitigate the release of a minor but vital to life GHG ie; CO2 which gas is claimed from unproven, unverified, invalidated climate models to be supposedly responsible for creating dangerous [ non proven , non event and beneficial ] increases in global temperature, it has cost us, the consumers in one way or another some $5.5 billion plus lifting the costs of power into realms that are becoming increasingly unaffordable to so many of the lowest paid and lowest income citizens of Australia.
May a pox descend on every wind power scamming company owner and all their share holders.
And the quicker, the better.
130
Thanks ROM.
Just for the sake of curiosity here, do this exercise at that same link provided by ROM above, the whole Wind Output for Australia, only here I have included that same link as a specific date, 26NOV2013, and while you click on ROM’s link today, you will get the result for yesterday, each day the default changes to the previous day’s chart, so the link I have will be for this specific day in question, 26NOV2013
Wind Performance 26NOV2013
Now, under that second chart there is the list for all Wind Plants, all with ticks in their boxes at left.
Untick all the boxes at the left, and then untick the box titled All at right. What you are left with is the middle row, which is every Wind Plant in South Australia, and the indicated total of 1203MW Nameplate Capacity.
Now, note the solid black line, and that is the total for all those wind towers, and see there how it stumbles along the bottom for 10 hours.
Great to look at for a wry smile, but it does show something important.
The hours that the AEMO (Australian Authority for Electrical Power) quote as Peak Power are from 7AM to 10PM, so then, when power is needed most of all, what has wind supplied here for South Australia on this day?
Now scroll down to the third graph. Untick all States except S.A. and untick All, leaving just the red load curve for S.A.
The Average total consumption for S.A. for those same 15 hours comes in at around 1700MW per hour.
Wind, from that second chart, during this period supplied on an hourly average 104MW of power, or 6.1% of the full power requirement for S.A.
6.1%. A pitifully low amount when the State proudly proclaims that it runs on Wind Power.
This also means that all those Wind Plants were running at a Capacity Factor of only 8.6% for that time.
Hey, cherry picking some greenies might say. One day.
Be aware, be fully aware that this day linked to here is by far nowhere near the worst. What you see here is indicative of power delivery for around 120 days of every year. There will be days when it is higher than the quoted Capacity rating, but the average is barely 30% CF, which is four times higher than what you see here, a complete lack of delivery for when it is most needed.
These days, when it comes to cost, we have become inured to the word Billions, so cost these days means virtually nothing. (Pshaw! When did that happen? or more importantly, How did that happen?)
So concentrating on cost is just a supplementary reason. The real reason we should be crucifying Wind Power is that it DOES NOT DELIVER.
Wind Power is an absolute failure. If anything else was designed with these horrendously bad parameters, it would be laughed out of existence.
Now can you see why you NEVER hear the truth about these monstrosities. The concentration is on the peripherals that people don’t like, the aesthetic look of them, the loss of visual aspect, the health problems, the wildlife problems, and even the cost.
While all these things have an importance, by far the greatest and most telling point against Wind Power is that IT JUST DOES NOT DELIVER.
Tony.
130
Tony has filled in the details of how to find and look at those AEMO figures for eastern Australian wing generator power output and it’s relativity and [ non ] contribution to the total amounts of power required to run eastern Australia’s entire domestic, business and industrial systems .
As Tony also says, yesterday was far from the worst case scenario for wind power production. I have a few such graphs on the now defunct WZ climate forum’s Alternative Energy Scam thread from mid year where there is a damn sight less wind power than yesterday being generated in calm conditions over all of eastern Australia.
As the publicly accessible AEMO graphs only go back about 30 days we can using that blue “Change Date” box at the top of that AEMO site we can select another date, say Nov 1st 2013.
SA politicians are quite proud of their reliance on the CO2 saving wind power although I’m not sure all the SA citizens would agree with their politicians after they get the power bills.
So canceling all those boxes which don’t relate to SA as well as ticking the “selected” box and canceling the “all” box and we see that on Nov 1st, the power demand for SA ran at about the 1400 Mw’s all the way through even during the night.
The 1203 Mw’s of SA wind power [ $2.4 billion worth of turbines ] by around 9 pm [ 2100 hrs ] had fallen to under 60 Mw’s and then over the next few hours fell further to a remarkable level for a claimed superior industrial grade power source [ sarc/] of less than 30 Mw’s or 2.5% of claimed output and 2% of SA’s power demands in that period.
Or to put it another way;
About 6 of these at probably about a million dollars each would produce the same amount of power as those $2.4 billion dollars worth of wind turbines which we are forced to pay for by the politicians, during those same few hours and cost a damn sight less to run.
10
Just an explanation on the Wind Performance site.
That is not an AEMO site.
It’s a private site run by Andrew Miskelly, and I want to show you the work involved with that.
Here is the AEMO data that he uses, at this link.
Now click on just one of the blue links there, and it opens in an XL spreadsheet which you will need to open if you have a spreadsheet program. This then tells you the power delivery from every power plant in Australia for every 5 minutes, each of those plants with its own dedicated code.
What Andrew does is collate the power from every wind plant on an hourly basis to generate his three charts at that site of his. I suppose it could be an automated program for ease of construction, but it’s still a lot of work, and it’s not even his full time day job.
Each day he comes out with the charts for the previous day.
It goes back more than 4 years now, so it’s a wonderful resource I just love using, and if you really do want to see a single day when wind power in Oz failed so utterly, look at this particular day.
Wind performance 03Jun2013
This is a work day Monday, and as scary as that looks, do the same task. Untick all the non S.A. boxes and the All box so it just shows all the S.A. wind plants only.
This continued well into the next day as well, so there was a period of almost 24 hours when we had 1203MW of Nameplate Capacity delivering as close to nothing as was possible, so around 600 to 700 towers with barely 5 to 10 at most actually turning.
The total power delivered by SA wind into SA grids came in at 1.1% of the requirement for more than 16 hours at a Capacity Factor of 1.6%.
The total wind Nameplate Capacity is theoretically between 60% (Summer) and 66% (Winter) of possible total consumption, so where you see these figures quoted, that is for nameplate capacity, because the real total for power actually delivered to grids is barely 20% at the absolute best, and with days like this at 1% then that power has to come from somewhere else, usually at enormous cost, which is in fact a reflected true cost of wind.
So, in fact Wind power is very costly when it is in full operation, and even more expensive when it not in anything other than full operation.
Tony.
40
Thanks Tony on that info on what I thought was an official AEMO site.
The guy needs a very big pat on the back for the way the info is presented.
I’ve got the info somewhere but how much power do the idle turbines pull out of the grid to keep their systems operating and to turn the blades regularly to stop brinnelling corrosion of the main bearings?
From what i remember it’s a fair bit.
10
Should add that Andrew Miskelly is the computer guy on the WZ site and from my angle one of the good guys whom I respect.
He also has a paper out on the uselessness of wind turbines.
WIND FARMING IN SOUTH EAST AUSTRALIA
20
Can’t wait for Margots
takelecture on this one.20
26 Nov: BBC: UK ‘still offshore wind power world leader’, PM says
David Cameron’s spokesman said the UK “had installed more offshore wind power than any other nation”.
RWE said it was being cancelled as it was “not viable… to continue with development in the Bristol Channel Zone” because of “technological challenges and market conditions”.
However, BBC South West political editor Martyn Oates said sources told the BBC it would “not go ahead because of problems in financing it”.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) had initially told the BBC the scrapping of the scheme was a matter for the developer…
However, Mr Cameron’s spokesman said there had been £29bn of private investment in renewable energy since 2010.
The DECC also told the BBC: “The UK still expects to deploy significant amounts of offshore wind by 2020 and we remain well placed to meet our 2020 renewable energy target.”
But Tim Jones, of the Devon and Cornwall Business Council, said the cancellation was “absolutely a massive body blow for Devon”.
He said: “We were looking at hundreds of jobs during construction and about 200 jobs for 25 years looking after it when it was built…
Ian Button, who owns a caravan park on the Gower Peninsula, Swansea, overlooking the channel, said going ahead with the array would have had a “huge impact” on his business and the site would have “lost a view that’s been here for generations”.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-2..7172
00
anyone like to comment on these claims?
25 Nov: Quartz: Todd Woody: The US has 43 nuclear power plants’ worth of solar energy in the pipeline
The boom in solar energy in the US in recent years? You haven’t seen anything yet. The pipeline of photovoltaic projects has grown 7% over the past 12 months and now stands at 2,400 solar installations that would generate 43,000 megawatts (MW), according to a report released today by market research firm NPD Solarbuzz. If all these projects are built, their peak electricity output would be equivalent to that of 43 big nuclear power plants, and enough to keep the lights on in six million American homes.
Only 8.5% of the pipeline is currently being installed, with most of it still in the planning stages. Some projects will inevitably get canceled or fail to raise financing…
But there’s reason to believe that a good chunk of these solar power plants and rooftop installations will get built over the next two years. That’s because a crucial US tax break for renewable energy projects is set to fall from 30% to 10% at the end of 2016…
In 2012, for instance, wind developers installed a record 13,131 MW as a key tax credit was set to expire, accounting for 42% of all new US electricity capacity that year. (The US Congress subsequently renewed the tax break for another year.)…
All those projects will make the US the third largest solar market, behind China and Japan.
http://qz.com/150887/the-us-has-43-nuclear-power-plants-worth-of-solar-energy-in-the-pipeline/
00
26 Nov: UK Financial Times: Chris Bryant: Bosch to sell German solar operations to Solarworld
Bosch is to sell part of its lossmaking solar unit to Germany’s Solarworld as it seeks to cut its losses from the market, while preserving jobs…
A total of 1,100 out of 1,400 jobs will be preserved at the site after a second, unnamed, investor agreed to manufacture pharmaceutical products there and Bosch said it would relocate some automotive electronics production…
Solarworld flirted with insolvency in August before bondholders agreed to take a haircut as part of a restructuring and debt-for-equity swap. Bonn-based Solarworld reported a first-half net loss of €82m.
Bosch and Solarworld declined to reveal the financial terms of the agreement. However, Solarworld hinted it had not parted with any cash, describing it as an “asset deal” that would not reduce its “financial resources”…
Bosch remains in talks to find a solution for its solar module plant in Vénissieux, France, as well as a buyer for its majority stake in Aleo Solar, a photovoltaic module manufacturer.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/9e8d8344-567b-11e3-ab12-00144feabdc0.html
00
26 Nov: UK Times: Ben Webster: Wind farm project could employ floating turbines
Vast wind farm in the Bristol Channel could be built with floating turbines, after plans for 240 fixed turbines at the site were abandoned.
A vast wind farm in the Bristol Channel could eventually be built with floating turbines, the Crown Estate said yesterday after a German company abandoned plans for 240 fixed turbines at the site…
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/environment/article3932891.ece
00
26 Nov: Wall St. Journal: Cassie Werber: U.K. Offshore Wind Energy a Turnoff for Investors
Wind Farms Are Expensive, Subsidies Are Uncertain, Plans Are Being Curtailed
RWE’s decision highlights the central difficulty in achieving Europe’s ambitious wind targets. Huge plans are in place, but few investors are willing to stake the billions needed to build them, in an environment where government subsidy is essential but uncertain and costs can skyrocket…
“You worry at the moment, when [offshore] is very expensive, and relies on a long-term government contract at a very high price. And you also don’t know how it’s going to be to operate in very harsh conditions” out at sea, said Emma Tinker of private-equity firm HgCapital, a long-established renewables investor…
Financial investors are essential to offshore wind’s future: The U.K. is planning to increase offshore-wind energy production from 3.65 gigawatts now—enough to power 2.5 million homes—to 39 GW in a construction phase stretching out to 2030. But the financial outlay is massive: £37 billion ($60 billion) is needed to achieve 16 GW, or less than half the final total, according to Industry body Renewable U.K…
HgCapital, which has £5.6 billion under management, is putting its money into onshore wind and solar, technologies that could be competitive with fossil-fuel power and “shouldn’t need cash subsidies” within five years, according to Ms. Tinker…
To make matters worse, the bounty of cheap oil and gas from shale finds in the U.S. has made renewable energy even less competitive.
Advocates of green energy say sticking with fossil fuels is a short-term plan…
Up the coast from the Atlantic Array site, RWE is completing the second largest offshore project in the world, costing £2 billion. It found a partner in the City of Munich, a German municipality with a bankroll and renewable energy targets to meet…
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303281504579221863310739236
00
another one for comment:
pdf: Nov 2013: Green Energy Markets: Household Solar in Australia: Study: State of the small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme
The cost passed through to consumers for the SRES is expected to amount to only 1.3 per cent of a customer’s bill. However once we allow for solar’s positive impact on reducing wholesale prices the increase in household electricity bills is only one third of this – only 0.3 per cent or $1.90 increase on a typical quarterly electricity bill…
http://www.recagents.asn.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Assessment-of-SRES-for-RAA-Final.pdf
00
the cheek of Labour/FoE & unions that have back CAGW policies:
26 Nov: UK Independent: John Hall with PA: Bitter conditions linked to deaths of additional 31,000 people last winter – a rise of almost one third
The figures follow a bitterly cold start to the year.
This March was the coldest since 1962, with an average monthly temperature of just 2.6C (36.7F).
In March, 1,582 people died every single day – 14 per cent higher than average, the report states…
Pensioners were worse affected by the 31,000 additional deaths…
Over-75s accounted for 25,600 winter-related deaths.
The ONS said that women over the age of 85 had the greatest number of excess winter deaths for all age groups. Last winter, there were 28.2 per cent more deaths among women in this age group compared to the non-winter period…
Following recent price hikes from energy companies, many people may be forced to choose between “heating and eating”, Labour warned.
Shadow public health minister Luciana Berger said: “A third of these excess deaths are caused by people living in homes that are too cold. This winter, David Cameron’s failure to stand up to the energy companies will leave too many people forced to choose between heating and eating. Ministers need to take urgent action and back Labour’s plans to freeze energy bills.”
Age UK’s charity director, Caroline Abrahams, added: “Excess winter deaths are preventable and today’s figures are a damning indictment of our failure to address the scandal of cold homes in this country.
“We strongly believe that the only sustainable solution is investment to increase the energy efficiency of our housing stock so cold homes become a thing of the past. The Chancellor must take urgent action on this in next week’s Autumn Statement.”…
Dave Prentis, general secretary of union Unison, said: “The Government cannot cross its fingers and hope for a milder winter, it must take action now. The Big Six energy companies need reining in. Prices are rising at the same time as profits are growing.
“It’s a national disgrace that elderly people are dying in this country because they are too frightened to put on their heating.”
Friends of the Earth fuel poverty campaigner Sophie Neuburg added: “Making energy efficiency a top Government priority would knock hundreds of pounds off fuel bills, create jobs and save thousands of lives every year.”…
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/bitter-conditions-linked-to-deaths-of-additional-31000-people-last-winter–a-rise-of-almost-one-third-8964139.html
00
Absolutely despicable. How can people complain about this Wind Plant falling over because of financial concerns, when those filthy rotten disgusting people go ahead and approve a new Nuclear Power Plant for 16 Billion Pounds, four times the cost of this wonderful clean wind plant. (and /sarc)
So then let’s compare Hinkley Nuclear with this Wind Plant.
The cost for the Wind Plant is 4 Billion Pounds, so scaling that up from the 1200MW wind to the 3200MW Nuke, then 3200MW at the cost for wind comes in at only 10.7 Billion Pounds, so hey, wait a minute, then Wind really is cheaper. Fancy that. Who woulda Thunkit? I’ll be damned. I didn’t expect that. (and /sarc for all the above)
So then let’s compare the two. This Wind Plant and the Hinkley Nuke.
Hinkley Nuke has a Nameplate Capacity of 3200MW, and a yearly power delivery of 26,000GWH and a life expectancy of 50 years minimum.
The Wind Plant has a Nameplate Capacity of 1200MW, and a yearly power delivery of 4230GWH and a life expectancy of 25 years.
So Hinkley provides 6.15 times the power of the Wind Plant each year and over its lifespan will supply 12.3 times as much power.
So, just to supply an equivalent amount of power from this one Nuke, they would need 12.3 of these Wind Plants, costing a mere 49.2 BILLION POUNDS.
Did you get that? Almost 50 BILLION POUNDS, and you still only get power on a limited basis.
Hinkley will supply the same amount of total yearly power from the Wind Plant in, umm 60 days.
Did you get that?
60 days.
Sort of puts BOTH plants into some perspective now doesn’t it?
Tony.
80
In reality, wind turbine life seems to be closer to 8 to 12 years than 25 years.
The capacity factor is worse offshore in exposed regions as it can take 10 months (in the North Sea, not the more exposed Atlantic) to effect repairs due to unfavourable weather and the lack of vessels capable of providing the necessary technical support, even in favourable weather. A hundred more ships have to be built (at hundreds of millions of Euros each) to support the wind-blown fantasies of thousands of large-scale, offshore wind turbines providing half-way reliable electricity.
Thousands of more people will be working at sea; usually sitting out unsuitable weather, then working, more often than not, under artificial lights at night and at heights with very large loads dangling from high cranes; having waited all day for a break in the weather. Far from optimum safety.
It’s a “solution” that doesn’t scale to solve the size of the perceived problem.
I find the sacrifices demanded by the religion to be excessive.
50
Tony, is the life expectancy of 25 years for wind turbines sited on land or off shore or either? I very much doubt that off shore turbines would endure 25 years of weather conditions.
Here is some info on those monstrosities. A certifiers picnic!
20
scaper
The wind industry’s claims on the 25 or so years lifetimes of wind turbines are pure crap designed to suck the investors in.
The Performance of Wind Farms in the United Kingdom and Denmark
Quoted from the Executive Summary of the above report; [ my bold ]
3. The normalised load factor for UK onshore wind farms declines from a peak of about 24% at age 1 to15% 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.
50
55 technical standards referenced and still; they fail.
Many geotechnically with piles moving after erection, requiring the dismantling of the structure before catastrophic failure (typically; buckling as the head load becomes excessively eccentric) The wind turbine cannot successfully yaw to face the wind as its bearing won’t be near enough to horizontal and the yaw motors would be overloaded trying to turn the nacelle. They might overheat, perhaps causing the hydraulic fluid to catch fire, burning the whole generator to a crisp while dropping burning, composite blades into the sea, potentially as floating and partly-submerged navigation hazards.
40
Bernd,
This one looks definitely like a geotechnical design problem.
Wind Mill pulls out concrete base?
The ground looks completely water logged.
30
That wouldn’t have been the entire foundation. I see no reinforcing steel penetraing from the plinth into the the sub-surface plinth. It looks like the upper plinth was glued to the lower part. Glue doesn’t work well in such loading.
I’m no civil gingerbeer but an estimate of the extent of the footings/foundation for a wind turbine in soils is “out-riggers” in 4 directions at a distance of about a blade-length, linking by deep, reinforced and pre-stressed beams to the central, deep plinth supporting the tower, and connecting to its mounting bolts directly with them welded to the reinforcing cage. 90% of the wind turbine’s structure is below the surface.
You can make do with less concrete if you’re on bed-rock and can fix sufficient anchors without cracking the rock badly.
Off-shore, one really cannot tell the geophysics until one is driving the piles. It’s a risky business; financially and environmentally.
Which reminds me: Those Greens’ plans to put wind turbines on the North Mole in Freo must be wilfully ignorant of the geotechnical requirements. Wind turbines on the mole have essentially the same requirements for footings as an off-shore structure: You have to sink deep piles. And while you’re doing that, you have to prevent the entrance to the Port from silting up.
Once operating, weather RADAR will be partially blinded making prediction of conditions for vessels sailing into and out of the port less reliable. SUch is the experience with operational wind farms in Europe.
I seem to remember that just a few days ago, the project’s designers Enercon had their HQ in Germany raided by German federal prosecuters investigating collusion in Mafia money laundering.
20
Not wishing to de-rail the topic, but …
George Carlin (RIP) sees into the future!
At 5.20 into George’s routine ‘Saving the planet’, he talks about plastic and how if it is not degradable, how the earth will incorporate plastic into a ‘new paradigm’, the earth plus plastic.
He was right: New life discovered growing on plastic waste dubbed the ‘plastisphere’
20
handjive,
There is already tipping under way that this plastic thing will be the next newest global catastrophe meme tof the alarmists greenies as the non event climate catastrophe falls over.
The answer to that is this;
Marine microbes digest plastic
Quoted from Nature News
The ocean contains vast amounts of plastic, mostly as tiny shards floating just beneath the surface. Under an electron microscope, each scrap of “plastic confetti” becomes “an oasis, a reef of biological activity,” says marine microbiologist Tracy Mincer of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.
&
Microbes have been found digesting plastic in landfills, he says, but this is the first evidence of marine bacteria breaking down plastic in the ocean. The work was presented the 5th International Marine Debris Conference in Honolulu, Hawaii, on 24 and 25 March.
Disappearing debris
Plastic-eating bacteria might help explain why the amount of debris in the ocean has levelled off, despite continued pollution.
62
So.. if we stop allowing plastic to escape into the oceans, we destine a whole myriad of new species to extinction ! ???
I wonder how the greenies feel about that ?? 😉
51
When they’ve finished digesting the plastic- who will they come for next?
Be afraid, be very afraid!
40
I’ll have to invent plastic bikinis, won’t I !! 🙂
40
Too late Andy http://www.gizmag.com/n12-3d-printed-bikini/18869/ they’re sustainable and supportable. 🙂
20
Sighhhh!
Oh for my youth again!
Bikinis are like a barb wire fence;
Designed to protect the property but not hide the view.
10
Darn , I always get these ideas too late !! 🙁
10
I was going to answer him as well – http://www.sustainableguernsey.info/blog/2011/05/bikinis-made-of-recycled-plastic-bottles-and-fabric-off-cuts/
Imagination is not dead! 😉
00
I’m just waiting for the shrill claims of a Plastic Tipping Point……..
20
This is actually a good sister article to the previous one. “Competition” is capitalism and is antagonistic towards socialism.
20
Offshore wind is good for environmentalists because they don’t have to explain the dead birds on the surface.
I note that the food chain is “inverted”: The corpses of the birds that would have eaten the fish, are eaten by the fish.
A technological side-effect of large wind farms is that it negates the effectiveness of weather RADAR. So the risks of coastal shipping and air traffic is increased. Potentially; more food for the fish.
51
I remember from when I first came to Australia in 1968, that the suburbs not on scheme water had their own bore, a water tank on a tower; and a few had the equivalent of a wind turbine to pump the water from the bore into the tank.
In the suburbs.
Those who could afford electric water pumps quickly got rid of the squeaky, high-maintenance windmill.
30
Bernd
Don’t bring the subject up of maintaining those old water pumping windmills to this old farmer.
The greenies brought my last one cheap. real cheap to erect on their patch so as to give a synthetic and artificial aroma of supposed country culture and for the embellishment of their fellow greenies jealousy.
30
Look at the bright side; the thing has either rusted solid and/or the neighbours/council have made them pull it down as a safety hazard; given their propensity to regular “leaf shedding” in high winds; especially in the corrosive coastal/salty regions.
10
“the squeaky”
ahh……. the character of the Aussie outback. going, going, gone 🙁
30
I remember when I lived out near Dubbo for a while, Had one that especially squeaky about 300m from the house.
Windy nights.. darn was that thing noisy !!!
40
And then Oh sXXt! You realised around 9 pm that the big overhead tank was dry as well as the damn thing had stopped pumping for some obscure reason. And the toilet needed water as did the animals and the garden or what there was of it.
X%$&**#@
Fixing it in the lights of the ute!
##*(^@#$_+
40
More likely to notice at 7am when you get up to have a shower before heading off the work !!!
30
Andy,
I’ll start by reminding you of RTFM.
Windmills were designed to be oiled (or at least the Southern Cross ones I’m familiar are) and if it was squeaking – – .
30
Hey, It was the neighbour’s windmill.. not mine 🙂
We actually pumped our water up from the Lachlan River.
And iirc , they use grease, not oil….. been a long time since then though.
20
Also, just on the cost thing.
Remember the oft quoted hackneyed meme….. Build more of them and they will get cheaper and cheaper, hence more able to compete with coal.
This plant was proposed to cost 4 Billion Pounds, around $AUD7.2Billion.
WTF.
Compare apples with apples here and not comparing this Offshore with onshore, so let’s then look at Cape Wind in Nantucket Sound, off Cape Cod in Massachusetts. That is 130 towers, state of the art for when it was first proposed prior to the turn of the Century, and still not even constructed, let alone actually delivering power.
130 towers state of the art at the time at 3.5MW hence 450MW.
This new wind plant has 120 towers, state of the art for now at 5MW, hence 1200MW.
Cape Wind projected cost $2.6 Billion.
This proposal projected cost $7.3 Billion (4 Billion Pounds)
Cape Wind started life with a projected cost of $700 Million.
The costs most definitely have not come down, in fact exploded by a factor of 4 for Cape Wind and then a factor a further 3 on top of that, so in fact 12 times more expensive than barely 14 years ago, and that’s not just inflation.
Compare it to the much cheaper onshore plants and they too are only heading in the one direction….. up, and exponentially up.
OK then, let’s look at cost.
This proposal in the UK will see a cost recovery of $70/MWH ….. and keep in mind that is just for the recovery cost for the original Capital outlay alone, not adding on anything else.
Of course that cost I mention here will NEVER be mentioned directly, because (a) there is a direct Government subsidy at the front end for construction, hence lowering the amount now needed to be recovered, seemingly making the power now cost cheaper per MWH. and (b) a contractual agreement (and there’s no need to mention this either because it is commercial in confidence) where the Government pays a certain amount to the owners per MWH of power generated, also now artificially lowering the per MWH unit cost for electricity. This then has the desired effect of making this Wind Power seem close in cost per MWH for coal fired power, a cost they then artificially inflate with the addition of the CO2 cost, the addition of CCS, and the lowering (mostly halving) the life expectancy of the coal fired power plant.
Even when they do all of this, coal fired power is still CHEAPER, and current existing coal fired power can generate its power for $30 per MWH, something Wind will never be able to compete with, not when they build new wind plants for 4 Billion Quid anyway.
As with everything to do with Climate Change/Global Warming, it really is only about the money.
Tony.
50
“This new wind plant has 120 towers, state of the art for now at 5MW, hence 1200MW.”
Umm, Tony…
You might want to check your arithmetic here.
It’s actually much worse than you thought.
10
Thanks for finding that.
How right you are.
In my rush to calculations, I incorrectly halved the number of towers.
There are in fact 240 of them and not the 120 I mentioned.
Again, LevelGaze, thanks for picking me up.
My error.
Tony.
20
RWE, the company planning the Atlantic Array put the cost at 4.5 billion. Given ManicBeanCounter’s estimate (comment 8.1) of 4.3 billion return in 10 years, it was probably marginal at best and assumed electricity prices would rise substantially. With Ed Millibrand resorting to demagoguery this became unlikely, hence plug pulled.
MBC’s figure for cost per MWh is pretty accurate as the UK Gov. gave it as £140 per MWh for offshore wind, and they have access to a lot of information that is ‘confidential’.
00
Tony,
You may not be wrong at all. Originally RWE had three options, for different sizes of turbines. To try to win public support, they cut it back to two options of 278 x 180m turbines or 188 x 220m turbines.
Search the site http://www.slaythearray.com/latest-news/ for “30.05.12”
My calculations for the Atlantic Array were based on 1390MW (from 5MW for the smaller 180m turbines) and 25% utilization. Using the 30% figure that you prefer pushes the 10 year gross revenue figure to £5.1bn. This does not include any inflation in wholesale price of electricity, so even with a 15 year expected life it seemed a pretty good scheme until Labour leader Ed Miliband proclaimed two months ago that as Prime Minister he would freeze energy prices.
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Reuters-
Vattenfall has mandated Morgan Stanley to organise the sale of a British wind park as the Swedish utility scales back outside its home market, two people familiar with the matter said.
Vattenfall has invested 2.3 billion euros ($3.4 billion) in six UK wind parks since 2008.
The first power generating asset to come on the block will be Vattenfall’s Project Ormonde, a 150 megawatt facility in the Irish Sea, the sources familiar with that transaction said. It could fetch around 400-500 million pounds ($US650-$US810 million), one of them said.
“The sale will likely start some time next year, as Vattenfall is waiting for clarity on some regulatory issues, which are crucial to determine the profitability and price of the assets,” one of the sources said.
A spokesman for Vattenfall said a reorganisation announced in July would allow it to respond to tough European market conditions, but it was “too early to say how Vattenfall will go about optimising the value of its portfolio.”
All of a sudden the Green rats don’t want to sail with the Great Green Ship of State any longer. But what about the grand-kiddies guys?
30
The only sustainable wind farms are the ones growing beans.
40
But that wind is so bad unless lit at the exhaust point.
An opportunity to get on the warmist gravy train. Surely I can get a few hundred million grand to research bean sequestration.
Put them in a humungus can with a green label…solved, next problem facing mankind, thanks.
10
A couple of years ago the head of the transmission network in the UK stated that people in the future would have to get used to turning things off when the wind wasn’t blowing – as a result of the increasing dependence on wind.
00
Oh, I’ll just stop this welding of a 32mm thick steel for a tower section of a wind turbine in the middle of a seam then. Do I call the scrap metal merchant before or after the wind starts blowing again?
Failure to appreciate the necessity of a reliable and plentiful energy supply to industrial processes results in people making the wrong choices.
30
Obviously Flannery and Williams were right, it’s those pesky sea levels. Anyone warned the Maldives?
30
Why do you need to check the water depths when you got some maps?
Don’t laugh!
It happens a lot more in big business and big organisations than you might like to think.
30
RWE’s CEO is Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt, one of the two authors of Die Kalte Sonne (translated into English as “The Neglected Sun”). The other author, Dr. Sebastian Luning, is an advisor to RWE. The book makes really very interesting reading. Some chapters have over 200 papers cited, so it’s thorough.
Consider: you were going to invest billions in such a project, then you discover the wind was not going to be where you were about to build but had moved North (or South) as part of prolonged decadal weather patterns driven by the AMO and NAO. So you crunch the numbers again and they all come out negative. Very negative. Not even a chance of breaking even and never any profit. Always negative.
What would you do?
Remember, you’re a commercial organisation, you have to provide profit for your shareholders.
Would you collapse the project and walk away?
I would.
30
RWE CEO is Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt, one of the two authors of Die Kalte Sonne (translated into English as “The Neglected Sun”). The other author, Dr. Sebastian Luning, is an advisor to RWE. The book makes really very interesting reading. Some chapters have over 200 papers cited, so it’s thorough.
Consider: you were going to invest billions in such a project, then you discover the wind was not going to be where you were about to build but had moved North (or South) as part of prolonged decadal weather patterns driven by the AMO and NAO. So you crunch the numbers again and they all come out negative. Very negative. Not even a chance of breaking even and never any profit. Always negative.
What would you do?
Remember, you’re a commercial organisation, you have to provide profit for your shareholders.
Would you collapse the project and walk away?
I would.
To be a little more accurate, he’s the CEO of RWE Innogy Ltd, (UK) and serves (or has served) over the last
15 years at board level at RWE Innogy, REpower Systems, Deutsche Shell and HEW. Prof. Vahrenholt served as the Chief Executive Officer of RWE Innogy Cogen GmbH.
30
Worse it the fact that some windfarms are in violation of the terms which they receive the subsidies in the first place,but they still get them. If this was a public company I’m sure I’d be in trouble,to put it mildly. Why should they be any different,as they appear to be above the law on this issue?
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.
1.5% of GE turbines will have faulty blades
1. GE has begun investigating another blade break involving its 1.6-100 turbine and 48.7-meter blade, this time at Invenergy’s California Ridge wind farm in Illinois. NOV 20th
2. This follows a previous blade break that happened three days earlier at the developer’s 94 MW Orangeville project in New York. NOV 17th.
3. Detroit-based utility DTE Energy has ceased work on its 112 MW Echo Wind Park after a blade from a GE 1.6-100 turbine broke off. NOV 5th
4. A similar incident involving the same turbine model occurred at DTE’s Thumb Wind Park in March.
5. As it turns out, this is not the first blade break at the California Ridge wind farm; Invenergy verifies that one occurred in November 2012.
Then GE has also identified a “suspect population” of 48.7-meter blades and contacted other potentially affected customers, and overall, Theile explains GE’s so-called suspect population represents about 1.5% of its total blades in the company’s wind turbine fleet of more than 22,000.
Well that’s 330 blades and potentially 330 turbines.
20
.
Meant to add that with motor vehicles worth $30,000, will get recalled for less error rate than this.
A wind turbine seems immune from this recall or rectification, even though they’re worth $2.1 million each in the case of the Cape Wind project.
20
Via the GWPF and you have to wonder at the extraordinary mental gymnastics that the believers and greens are prepared to go through to justify their attitudes and policies.
And all in the name of something that has never been proven scientifically to exist. ie; Global warming from increasing CO2.
But regardless the poor must be made to suffer in the name of the “cause”
Plain speaking folk would just say they are stark raving mad and imbecilic crazy. A classic case study for Lewendowsky. They deserve one another.
Then again they might be perfectly sane but have no ethics or morals or inhibitions against straight out deception, lying and deliberately distorting facts and the situation in promoting their cult like ideology which becomes an obvious goal when you read the below.
Example here under and note the name of the organisation involved to probably hide the real shadowy organisations behind that fanciful title.
WHY GREENS LOVE HIGH FUEL BILLS
25 NOVEMBER 2013
Fuel Poverty Action (FPA) reacted angrily when the UK prime minister, David Cameron, said he would act to cut fuel bills. Why?
FPA campaigns against higher fuel bills that hurt the poor – or does it?
Cameron said he would ‘cut the green crap’, meaning the ‘green levies’ that are added by law on fuel bills.
Fuel Poverty Action, supposedly the friend of the poor,denounced the proposed cut.
FPA is organising protests against high prices in central London on 26 November, but its own policy seems to support higher prices. How did it tie itself in these knots?
The answer is that FPA’s campaigners support the green levies on fuel bills.
Green levies on fuel bills were brought in by the New Labour government to finance the transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
They make up nine per cent of the cost of the average fuel bill, currently running at £1,300 a year.
It is easy to see how FPA and other defenders of the green levies have painted themselves into this corner.
The levies are supposed to fund investment in wind power and other renewables, and also to pay for government schemes to insulate people’s houses so that they can cut their fuel use.
The problem is that both of these are long-term goals which – it is hoped – will cut the cost of fuel for households. But in the here and now they are adding to the cost of electricity bills.
Green campaigners like FPA end up calling for higher fuel bills so we can have lower fuel bills.
In 1947, the then president of France, Charles de Gaulle, said something similar: ‘We must all tighten our belts if the standard of living is to rise.’
A few days ago, the Guardian wrote about‘green levies, which go towards… helping the poor cut their usage’.
Green campaigners have long known that there is a problem with their goal of reducing consumption, namely that it is unlikely to be popular with the vast majority of people, who are also consumers (it was a point that was hotly debated at the ‘climate camps’ – the annual green get-togethers – until they stopped in 2011).
The point is sharply drawn in the green policy on fuel bills. Environmentalists want to see less fossil fuel burned, which means less electricity generated and higher prices. Moreover, environmentalists have long argued that prices are artificially low, and should include the cost of pollution.
The green levies on energy bills are based on those arguments. Higher fuel bills will cut consumption, and lead to smaller carbon emissions.
To make their point, green protesters succeeded in blocking a proposed coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in 2008, and won a moratorium on future coal-burning plants – and cutting back on electricity generation in turn leads to higher prices.
30
AndyG55 –
Dubbo today!
27 Nov: DailyLiberal: Dubbo solar project could be shining economic example
A $2 million project to install 3600 solar panels on an almost 25-hectare site on Boothenba Road has an estimated start up for the 2014/15 financial year…
He said the $2m estimated cost of the first phase of the Dubbo Solar One project would take about five months to construct and it was expected to begin operation shortly after and be cash flow positive…
He said the $2m estimated cost of the first phase of the Dubbo Solar One project would take about five months to construct and it was expected to begin operation shortly after and be cash flow positive.
He said the results indicate the Dubbo Solar One Project makes acceptable investment returns even in the scenario where the carbon tax and 20 per cent renewables scheme is cancelled.
In the report released by Red Sky to the ASX analysis of historical data showed solar projects could achieve significant time-of-day premiums to the average electricity price he said…
http://www.dailyliberal.com.au/story/1934338/dubbo-solar-project-could-be-shining-economic-example/?cs=111
00
Dubbo is, figuratively speaking just down the road from the Bayswater power plant in Muswellbrook.
This exciting new solar plant, 2.5MW in Capacity, once fully operational, will generate an astonishing 3.29GWH of power into the grid into the grid, so no, sorry, it’s not just for Dubbo at all, just the overall NSW grid.
However, that 3.29GWH of power supplied is really exciting to see. That’s at the (theoretical) 15% Capacity Factor.
What makes it really exciting is that this yearly power total is the equal to what is currently being supplied by Bayswater (on the same grid too) in, umm, 100 MINUTES.
Oh the joy those people of Dubbo must be feeling right about now.
Tony.
30
What also makes this new Dubbo solar plant so exciting is that if it does last the (claimed) 30 YEARS and delivers at the claimed 15% CF, something no other Solar PV plant has done, then that means that the total power delivered from this plant over those 30 YEARS effectively means that Bayswater can now close down 2 days earlier than its shutdown date.
30 years power from the solar plant equals 2 days power from Bayswater.
Excited yet?
I am. (Yeah Right!)
Tony.
40
Tony,
The article says, “$2m estimated cost of the first phase of the Dubbo Solar One project”,
I wonder what the total cost will end up being?
And you can pick up a 2.5MW 100% diesel CAT 3516C generator for under $1 million, delivered, ready to run. And these things can run for over 50 years. This Cat generator has been in use for 60 years.
20
“Dubbo is, figuratively speaking just down the road ”
No, not figuratively, it is really is just down the road. 🙂
That road being called “The Golden Highway”….
(Apart from a small diversion at the Muswellbrook end.)
10
UK gone mad,
Selling off the Didcot Coal Plant Generator transformers to Germany? Also Britain’s largest load transported by road.
The lorry and its 637-tonne load measured 294ft (89m), almost the length of a professional football pitch carried from Oxfordshire to Bristol and then by ship to a Siemens plant in Germany. The generator transformer was the first of three being removed from Didcot power station as part of its decommissioning program. Sold off.
Didcot, a coal fired power station, was disconnected from the national grid in March 2013 after 43 years of service.
Jeremy Zeid of UKIP tweeted:
Germany 1, England 0. Next.
20
And who really won WWIII ???
Why is it that Germany seems to be able to build new COAL fired power plants.. while UK closes theirs down.
There can only be one possible winner in this..
and that ain’t gunnabe Winston, because there’s NO “Winston” in the UK any more.
20
Here in Britain our PM has denied that he said (with an eye to the next election), “Get rid of the green crap!”
I do hope he did.
10
He felt the need to deny how he said it.
00
just saw the end of Chancellor Merkel’s press conference announcing her Coalition govt on BBC, after which the BBC reporter said it was all about balancing the books, & moving from nuclear to a green energy future of wind & solar. coal didn’t get a mention. this BBC report is prior to the Press Conference & doesn’t touch on energy:
27 Nov: BBC: German coalition: Merkel’s party reaches deal with SPD
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives have agreed terms for a coalition with the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD)…
The parties also agreed that there would be no tax increases, a key demand of the CDU/CSU…
Hermann Groehe, CDU secretary general: “No new taxes and no new debts.”…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25116115
the following, however, is probably closer to the truth than the BBC’s interpretation:
11 Nov: Bloomberg: Stefan Nicola: Merkel’s Coalition to Slow Wind-Energy Expansion to Reduce Costs
Merkel’s Christian Democratic bloc and the Social Democrats agreed in talks over the weekend to reduce the target for offshore wind turbines to 6.5 gigawatts by the end of this decade, and to 15 gigawatts by 2030, from 10 gigawatts and 25 gigawatts respectively. Negotiators also backed reducing aid for onshore turbines and forcing owners of most new clean-energy plants to sell power on the market…
Merkel has said the chief priority of her new government will be to overhaul Germany’s 13-year-old EEG clean-energy subsidy law that has helped land Germans with the second-highest power prices in the European Union…
Revising the EEG “will be the central project of the grand coalition,” Environment Minister Peter Altmaier told reporters yesterday in Berlin after concluding the agreement with the SPD. As a result, the energy switch will become “more predictable and lastingly affordable,” he said…
German consumers and companies finance clean-energy subsidies by paying a surcharge on their power bills. The fee will jump 18 percent on Jan. 1 and has more than quintupled since 2009…
Negotiators also agreed to slow the expansion of biomass energy, said they will leave subsidies for solar power unchanged and will “review” aid to companies that use a lot of energy, Dominik Geissler, a spokesman for the Environment Ministry, said yesterday by text message. The industry aid had helped inflate bills for private homes.
The two sides have already agreed to temporarily ban fracking for unconventional natural gas until environmental concerns are resolved.
While the new offshore wind targets correct “unrealistic expectations,” the coalition seeks to add onshore wind turbines where it’s windy to reduce the cost of the expansion, Altmaier said. Surging energy expenses are threatening jobs and investments, says Germany’s BDI industry federation, which represents about 100,000 companies from Volkswagen to Siemens.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-10/merkel-s-coalition-to-slow-wind-energy-expansion-to-reduce-costs.html
00
27 Nov: Herald Sun: John Masanauskas: Controversial plan for wind farm gets green light after no evidence found of health effects
Cherry Tree Wind Farm Pty Ltd has won a long battle against the local council and some residents, and will now be allowed to build 16 turbines along a ridge near Seymour.
The proposal was also fiercely contested by the Waubra Foundation, a group which investigates health problems by people living near wind farms…
Mitchell Shire Council received more than 100 objections to the wind farm plan in the Trawool Valley north of Melbourne.
In their decision, Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal members Heathcote Wright, QC, and Anthony Liston said there was no doubt that some people who live near wind turbines experience adverse health effects, including sleep disturbance and headaches.
“The current state of scientific opinion is that there is no causal link of a physiological nature between these effects and the turbine,” they said…
In granting a permit, VCAT set conditions including that turbines be built at least 2km from the nearest house, have no more than three rotor blades and that towers be no higher than 100m…
It also found there would be no unacceptable impact on local flora and fauna, would not be a bushfire risk and would comply with noise standards.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/controversial-plan-for-wind-farm-gets-green-light-after-no-evidence-found-of-health-effects/story-fni0fit3-1226769736888
00
I used to live near the beautiful coastline close to which this massive piece of industrial effrontery was to be erected.
I couldn’t give a monkey’s as to whether it was ‘money’ or ‘whoops – the water’s deeper than we thought’ – the fact is the residents of that area, many of whom are totally dependent on tourism for their livelihoods, can breathe a sigh of relief. Ditto TRUE ‘envoronmentalists’ who had massive concerns for the wildlife in the area – especially the puffins on Lundy Island.
The chickens (no pun intended) are gradually coming home to roost…
10
Looks like RWE is a bit short of cash at the moment:
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/445523/Fury-at-Npower-plan-to-move-1-400-jobs-to-India
10
Amusing to see you doing the King Canute….wind power continues to grow in the UK:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/UK_windfarm_growth.PNG
03
Marcot,
Bird Muncher Greenies search area for bird carcass remain at only a 50 meter radius around each turbine. The majority of the kills are around 113 meters. Bird kills in UK are now at an all time high, but authorities accept this GREEN criminal behaviour in reporting bird kill rates.
Your figures in the link above are old, the UK is well over 10GW and lucky on any given day to produce between 1GW and 2GW, probably the worst performing units of electricity production in the world, and the most expensive.
10
Marcot,
Bat kills account for over 60% of animals killed by turbines.
Look at this lovely video of research showing that bat lungs are exploded internally by the change in air pressure near the turbines.
Not chopped like birds, but the blood vessels in their lungs rupture and they drown in their own blood.
All these animal kills are blood on your hands Marcot.
10
Margot your sources probably include the King Island abortion as one of the projects “planned”.
I can tell you on very good authority that its chances are somewhere between Buckleys and Sweet Buggar All.
10
Didn’t your second grade teacher tell you NEVER to use Wiki as a source?
10
Ahh.. so they still haven’t quite run out of tax-payers money for subsidies.. YET.. !
The criminals building these with cut and run as soon as the subsidies run out, leaving the taxpayer to carry the clean up burden in 10-15 years time.
Like all pseudo-environmentalists (yes that’s you)……
… so long as they get their money or their warm fuzzy feeling, they don’t give a rat’s a*** about the environment and avian wildlife.
10
Off shore windfarms may often be located in areas where there are thick deposits of loose sand and gravel and soft clays. Consequently, any piles may need to be 50m to 75m deep to ensure adequate foundations. This possible for an offshore oil platform but the numbers of masts required for wind farms may make the costs very high.I would suggest that large tidal changes could result in over pressurised layers ( the pore water pressure increases as height of water increases due to tides but does not decrease at the same rate as the lowering of the tides). If there was a storm with high waves hitting the vertical mast of the wind turbine while sediments were over pressurised, the foundations could fail. There is also the issue of “Ringing”. These problems have been solved with large offshore oil drilling platforms but they are larger and more expensive than individual wind farm turbine masts.
00