Subsidy farms are designed to suck payments from plumbers, bakers and mums and dads.
By Jo Nova
When failure becomes a commodity…
Ponder for a moment how intrinsically unsuitable, maladapted, and worthless wind turbines are to a grid. Their failure is so comprehensive, multifaceted and inevitable, an entirely new and bizarre market was invented to reward their failures. Even when they generate electricity, if the time is wrong, the demand is low, or the network can’t handle it, they will still be paid. The grid can’t use the power, but the customer still gets slugged for something they didn’t use, or they couldn’t get. In the UK the costs for this useless power grew to nearly £400 million last year.
The largest provider of useless power was SeaGreen wind plant which made nearly twice as much from being “constrained” than from being of service. The Renewable Energy Foundation (REF) reports that SeaGreen earned £100 million for making electricity, and £200 million for being “constrained”. Effectively, the useful electricity it made costs a shocking £2.70 a kilowatt hour, after the other payments are included.
Obviously, when the government rewards failure, the market responds by planning to fail. It follows then that industrial wind plant developers would be bonkers if they weren’t looking for sites where their output would arrive at the worst possible time, or through the most remote and overloaded corner of the network.
Everything about the wind industry has “Rent Seeker” tattooed all over it.
Net Zero Watch condemns new windfarm rip-off
Campaign group Net Zero Watch has condemned the renewables industry rip-off of electricity consumers. New data published by the Renewable Energy Foundation reveals that the cost of paying windfarms to switch off soared by 91% in 2024. These payments are necessary when the grid has insufficient capacity to deliver the power to market. Nearly £400 million was paid to windfarms in 2024, and much more than this in indirect costs [1].
The largest single recipient was Seagreen, a new windfarm off the coast of Angus, which received nearly £200 million in these so-called “constraint payments”.
Net Zero Watch director Andrew Montford said:
The Renewable Energy Foundation suggest that Seagreen is making around £270 for each megawatt hour it actually produces, more than three times market averages, because it’s so lucrative to be switched off. This is a truly obscene rip-off of the consumer.
Windfarms seem to be being deliberately built in Scottish waters, where they will receive lucrative payments to be switched off.
And there are huge numbers of new windfarms planned for Scottish waters, where they will be just as constrained. So the rip-off is only going to get worse.
[1] When windfarms have to switch off, their customers still need power, so it is necessary to pay a gas-fired power station to switch on to meet demand.
SeaGreen wind plant has about 114 towers in the ocean east of Scotland. It could make about 1 gigawatt in theoretical capacity if all the turbines were working, but its actual load factor was a pathetic 14%. Of course, as a subsidy farm, it’s load factor was 200%.
Imagine a coal plant that earned money every time it had to slow down because customers weren’t using as much electricity as the power plant could have made?
h/t to Andrew Montford @Dissentient
if 2025 isn’t the year when the mainstream media finally gives in and reports things like this, there is going to be a thriving market for pitchforks.
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But if the woke-sters have shut down the market for hydrocarbons, we’ll need to go by day – due to lack of pitch torches.
Not as dramatic, I fear!
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And that may explain that so many Windfarm developments have recently been sited in Scotland where there are restriction on the amount of electricity that can be sent to England.
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It’s like the old joke about flogging a dead horse, you need bigger whips, a better jockey, more of everything.
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Actually, that’s an excellent analogy. Bigger jockeys’ and whips but smaller horses can only lead to failure on the strait. The finishing lines gets moved the closer you think you’re getting
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I expect Jo’s voice is growing hoarse from flogging inefficient renewables projects.
Hopefully this year voices like hers are heeded and people start to realise the futility of Australia going all-in on renewables. The debate will centre on renewables vs nuclear but HELE plants should also be part of the conversation.
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And therein lies the problem. Labor or Liberal they both support the wind/solar industry as part of uniparty nett zero solution to a problem that doesnt exist and the Libs are too scred and enfeebled to talk about coal for cheap electricity
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Very good article by Graham Lloyd in The Weekend Australian today, summarising Australia’s situation WRT offshore wind turbines.
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In the Magazine section – well worth a read.
“Model is broken: off-shore wind’s towering hype faces reality check”
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/model-is-broken-offshore-winds-towering-hype-faces-reality-check/news-story/431187ae3bf9a49c2751c5aa3c2979f7
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I still don’t understand how this incredible fra-d can prosper for decades and yet the majority of believers will fight tooth and nail and are very happy to be pig ignorant forever.
This should be very easy to understand in just a few minutes but as the years roll on I wonder what will ever wake up the majority of voters in the OECD countries.
Barnaby Joyce calls toxic W & S “swindle factories” and so far I have not heard a better description.
These toxic, unreliable swindle factories are super expensive and are only useful for about 15% (S) and 30% (W) of every day or month or year and have to be backed up by batteries or gas or Nuclear.
Obviously toxic batteries are another swindle and cost a fortune and are quickly discharged and then they don’t explain what charges them again.
Why is this data so difficult to understand?
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Some good news as Leftism, wokeism and the war against science come to an end.
The simpleton Australian anti-Energy Minister has left X because he ran away due to being fact checked into oblivion (with user initiated “community notes”). It wouldn’t happen on Farcebook etc. where they do censorship on behalf of the Government to enforce official lies and propaganda.
https://www.rebelnews.com/australia_s_climate_czar_abandons_x_amid_public_backlash
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One comment says:
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A commentator in The Australian claimed that he had 250,000 followers. Certainly not from the cohort on The Australian, as their comments clearly showed.
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Bowen is Australia’s stand out cockwomble.
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We already had a front row performance from the dimwit when he was Krudds minister for refugees, his excuses for not being able to stop the boats were legend, there were ‘push factors, there were ‘pull factors’, etc.
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Some understanding of oars then?
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Spelt – how?
Auto – just askin’
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This has all been a quick detour for those people, one battle in a long long war. They’ll be back, within months, making things miserable again. We can certainly celebrate this one short period of time, but we’d better be prepared for a harder fight soon.
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That is because the believers can’t think and therefore can’t grasp the idea that perhaps others can think. They have been fed a diet of opponents being far right fascists which makes those opponents pariahs in their eyes to be avoided and ignored at all costs.
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I don’t like how they are called “turbines”.
Even though it may be technically correct, it has the connotation of a machine that is part of a properly engineered system like a steam, water or gas turbine.
There is no way that wind generators that produce expensive and unreliable electricity can be considered parts of properly engineered systems when inexpensive and reliable alternatives of coal, gas, nuclear and hydro (not SH2) generators have been available for a century and a half (first coal power station, 1882, first hydro 1878) as parts of properly engineered and costed systems.
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David thanks for the info about the B O Bowen loony’s retreat from X and if he had any proper arguments he would’ve remained and taken the flak.
But your points about Wind Turbines are obviously true. If every other proper energy source could only generate for 30% of the time there wouldn’t be any coal or gas or nuclear or Hydro and yet we accept the unreliable toxic wind fra-d and destroy thousands of klms of our environments as well.
Why is it so?
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True, I’ve always seen turbines as machines that rotate with a bit of speed and purpose, these things are more like cow fans or windmills.
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Ronin,
“Fans” definitely – the kind excreta hits…..
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Yep.
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” don’t like how they are called “turbines”.”
Ever been up in one? The gearing being done hydraulically is spinning that genny at turbine-like speeds and noise levels. Like being down in the guts of a HE dam.
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I just had an idea. Imagine if instead of placing the generator at the top of the tower you instead place a pair of axles down the centre of the support column. One forced to spin clockwise the other ACW by the fan.
The reason for the two counter rotating shafts is to avoid the torque on a single shaft from rotating the head unit out of the wind.
Now, with the large rotating masses at ground level, the maintenance will be cheaper, the installation lighter and the whole structure cheaper.
And did you know, even after all these potential cost savings, the windmills will still only produce with an approximate 30% duty factor.
Maybe if they used flywheels….. Molten salt…… Fusion?
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The ‘gearing’ is done by gears lubricated by oil, the hydraulics are for the azimuthing gear drives, to point the thing into the wind and to apply the big disc brake on the gen shaft.
The generator rotor only does about 1800 rpm, enough to give 50HZ with a four pole generator.
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Re that oil –
From another blog a while back
A smallish windmill array in S E Colorado got a semi load of Mobil 1 a fortnight
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The etymology of the word turbine: from medieval French hence from Latin (turbo): to spin, to whirl. Hence something that rotates.
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Back in the 80s my father was paid to conduct a thorough wind power study. He designed a windmill, had a company price it and then looked at all the high wind regions of the British Isles. He concluded that it would cost 4 to 5X the cost of nuclear (AGR) generated electricity and would only be available 20% of the time and not necessarily when we needed it.
He gave a rough cost estimate of:
coal 3p
nuclear 5p
wind >20p
He discounted solar as a joke in cloudy Britain.
He added that they would lose ~12% of the power by the time they had transmitted it from the Hebrides of Scotland to the cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh. It seems he was about right but the Brits chose the most expensive option and shut down the cheapest.
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Again, how will the world stop using reliable cheap energy and then choose the unreliable super expensive, toxic solar and wind disasters + toxic batteries?
To reach Net Zero all combined countries would need to build 4 thousand toxic wind turbines every DAY and or 250 sq klms of toxic solar panels every DAY and endless toxic batteries for the next 25 years.
All of these toxic disasters would cost all combined countries about 275 TRILLION $ according to McKinsey. Any ideas anyone?
Of course no guaranteed beneficial change to the climate or temperature by 2050.
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How to raise $275 trillion? Easy. Just use federal government mathematics. Let us suppose that the federal government raises $4.5tr annually at an average tax rate of 30%. To get $275tr, just raise the tax rate to 1,833%. (That’s 30%*275/4.5).
I lived through a time of Labour government in the UK when the top tax rate on investment income was something like 103%. Extremely painful. Zero-income bonds became very popular.
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No wonder all the high earners fled overseas.
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And, whilst Rachel from Accounts, and the Tool-maker’s Son [does He have subconscious parallels with the Carpenter’s Son?], haven’t got that far, yet, their pursuit of counter-productive vindictiveness is starting to lead them – after just 6 months – into measures that actually cut the Government’s income.
Whilst I hope that there will be enough bite-back to stop them going into silly-moo territory, I am not at all sure …
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Another informative interview from Andrew Bolt talking to Daniel Wild of the IPA and Garth Hamilton about the so called net zero BS and fra-d on the 13th of NOV 2024.
A transcript is also available at the link.
https://ipa.org.au/research/climate-change-and-energy/daniel-wild-on-the-bolt-report-sky-news-australia-13-november-2024
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How these things that produce intermittent power, if you’re lucky, ever got connected to the grid is mindboggling.
AEMO or whatever preceded it used to have rules, and something like a cowfan would never have got a look in unless they could store the power and release it over 24 hrs.
Now all those commonsense rules that were in place for a very good reason have been abandoned.
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I remember when wind and solar developers said they needed certainty, a rather vague word that the public thought meant priority to sell the intermittent power produced. In reality it meant guaranteed profitability. I suspect politicians did not come up with the language in the legislation that pumped billions of dollars into the renewable energy schemes. That was likely done by teams of lawyers in the wind and solar industry. What kind of political fool takes money from an industry and then lets them write legislation to pick the pockets of the that politician’s constituents? I suspect it’s the average western politician these days.
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Surely, this is an obscene joke? And it’s not even April! It should apply to all government services! I’m thinking of income car and tax etc.
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So why has it taken decades and TRILLIONs of $ wasted by the OECD countries on the net zero con trick and fra-d and yet we still have substantial support from the Banks, big Business, finance companies , super funds and Unions etc?
Co2 emissions and levels continue to increase and the NON OECD countries continue to build more Coal and Gas power stns as fast as they can.
How can this obvious con trick continue to fool the stupid OECD countries, while the NON OECD countries build record numbers of BASE-LOAD FF generators every year?
How come Bernie Madoff was eventually caught and punished for his billions $ Ponzi scheme fra-d and yet this fra-dulent TRILLIONs of $ Ponzi scheme has lasted for decades and the OECD countries still fail to understand very simple data and evidence?
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Bernie Madoff’s marks have gotten most (94%) of their money back.
The money being spent on the wind facilities is, apparently, gone as far as citizens are concerned. Further, I suspect, those same citizens will pick up the tab for decommissioning and cleanup.
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Why?
Follow the green – backs.
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Scotland could do more Hydro and go more Nuclear. And sell more water to England. No need for unreliable windmills. Just keep making the whisky as well.
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Here’s little old Australia, manufacturer of next to nothing, population less than Tokyo, emitter of SFA, dreaming it can mix it on the world stage with all the big movers and shakers.
What a joke.
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This is the biggest problem for me. I NEVER hear it said in debate how Australia is so small that we should use this to our advantage in sidestepping this whole debate and issue. Normally small population is a huge disadvantage, but this country is so stupid we don’t use it to advantage when rarely applicable.
People seem to think “we must all chip in and do our bit.” Why? Do some maths!
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Our small population is used against us when we’re told our ‘per capita emissions’ are too high.
A large country with a small population still has long highways , long railway lines and long electricity grids stretching over thousands of kilometers.
Tokyo population 37,117,000, all services are compact, 25,000,000 in Australia are spread out over an area of most of Western Europe.
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“A large country”
A site with the name: thetruesize (dot) com
allows you to pick a country and drag it across
the map to overlay it on any other. Try it with
a small place like Puerto Rico and drag it to near Alice Springs.
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Ronin,
I’ll have you know that small nations are stepping up!
At least, according to the BBC . . .
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czd4g923n75o
One of the biggest ‘polluters’* has now legally banned installing fossil fuel heating systems such as boilers in new-build homes.
Or indeed extensions –
“The ban also excludes the use of an existing fossil fuel heating system in a new extension, through the installation of pipework or radiators.”
Plainly China and India will follow this lead within weeks, or months, or – well, quite soon, really!
This is, of course, the Isle of Man. Population – just under 90,000; area – about 222 square miles, and all North of Fort George, which is on Hudson Bay, in Quebec, Canada [for those unfamiliar].
Plainly the actions of the Isle of Man [which has its own Parliament, the Tynwald] will reduce the temperature in 2100 by – almost – a midge’s nudger**.
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* In the Irish Sea, anyway . . .
** They’re, er, not very big.
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Maybe the Dutch had the right idea a long time ago. Use windmills to move water away from reclaimed land.
A 25% CF was not a problem if five times as many windmills were installed.
Where does Australia need to reclaim some seabed?
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But they switched to steam engines in the 1820’s. More efficient and worked when wanted.
Those surviving windmills are for the tourists to photograph.
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Farmers used the good old Southern Cross windmill, made in Toowoomba, because they just pumped to a tank, so as long as the sheep didn’t drink all the water before the wind decided to blow again, all was good, if not, another tank was hooked up in parallel.
Also in their heyday of the late 1800’s and early 20th century, there was no alternative to cowfans, petrol driven pumps would appear around WW1.
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I still have and use one.
Now inflation has made those leather buckets expensive
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Well done, is it a Southern Cross or Metters or Comet.
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This off shore wind debacle is the sort of project the Victorian Labor government would excel at. There are still plans to build these monsters off the Gippsland coast. Again, all being done not for the environment, but solely for the investors.
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Constrain me, my sweet constrainable you….
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https://sheikyermami.com/2025/01/tucker-the-truth-is-incontrovertible/
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How do you combat this disgusting sovereign nation money laundering scheme, when the youth have been indoctrinated to believe there’s virtue in the broad brushstrokes? However they are bored with the specifics being completely counter to the ‘planet saving objectives’!
The frustration came last week with my three 16-19yo nieces and nephew who are fully educated in the green swamp of Canberra when they have zero real world interest in ‘saving us from the existential threat’!
No interest in combatting the true problem of pollution by recycling, no ensuring the thermostat ‘kicked in’ on the A/C because they wanted the door open for the dog to feel included!
The pouty 16yo didn’t want to join the group on an activity, but needed the A/C left on in the 8 seater diesel people mover to stay in the car!
I tried questioning the younger two about how the existential threat was explained to them at their swamp school and only got bored shrugs! No social eco warriors there.
The 19yo who finished school a year ago can’t remember what the lesson is, but knows ‘they’ need to change for everyones future.
Oh, did I mention, the 19yo drove the 650km on her own in her new diesel Mini Cooper, while her siblings, father and dog drove in the 8 seater people mover!
Yep, the ‘message’ the activists have devised for the at risk generations is as irrelevant as we knew from day one, as the renewables grift grows momentum!
Stop the activist media propaganda, the only ones listening are the weak politicians and undergraduate political advisers holding sovereign nations taxpayer wealth!
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