The Naked Scientists is a good show cos their standard of science reporting is very high. They don't usually bang on and preach about Climate Change Catastrophe Theory. So In was staggered to hear their totally misleading report on R5 about the London Array

.... In the report I heard numbers like "50% of UK production", (the words of windpower was blurred (actually it wasn't there !)), "a quarter of London's homes"

i.e. bigging it up terms probably straight off the press release, without question
- Wow it's going to be huge I thought, then I heard the number 1000 MW and as an engineer I'm like, but that's bugger all !

- quick numbers: UK production is 46GW so 1000MW is about 2%. that's hardly mega mega
- Now of course it doesn't run flat out, as it's not always windy. They say 35-40% load factor, but in practice best is 27%
so @30% = 0.65 % of UK electricity production optimistic ballpark figure.
* calculations

- It's sounds like a innoccent doe eyed trainee reporter, swallowing up all the hype of the Wind Power industry spokeswoman. But now it seems to me I have been lied to
... On the NS website this is her profile " Ali isn't a Scientist. She doesn't actually know much about science at all, .... Ali did an engineering degree in Australia ... Ali worked in the wind energy industry"
.. Far from not knowing that a 1GW Wind produces only 30% of a normal 1GW she knew perfectly well, but failed to make that clear.

Remember : Normal news is these days just infotainment spoon fed by people with a product or political agenda to sell. ... but To make good decisions we need good facts and good maths.

Further perpective (from http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3074)
- London Array: up to 341 wind turbines in the Thames Estuary
Cost: £1.5bn Power: 1000MW (when the wind is blowing)

- New Grain Power Station: gas fired, also in the Thames Estuary
Cost: £350m Power: 1200MW (when the gas is available)

Government agrees to 1.2GW Gas Power plant with 25%* lower CO2
This could be the true story as it's convenient to consider the Thames new Gas Power Station and the Array as part of one unit cos that's how it will work. When it's windy you'd turn the gas down & still satisfy demand. So what you end up with is a 1.2GW plant, where 25% of the output is CO2 free and almost cost free . So maybe that's why those nice people at a Shell a building a windfarm cos perhaps they get to sell quite a lot of gas ? Me cynical no, realistic.

if gas costs usual figure of 2.2p per KWh then £22 per MWh average hourly production of 300MW=£6,600 -- £58m per year saving

Look at that. That put's in perspective £1.5Bn construction cost for a £58m income.

F me is that right ? If you were using gas it would only cost you £58m a year ?
- New Grain construction cost is £350m. It's real output might be 80-90% say 1GW so equivalent cost for 300MW (real output of array) is £105m
- But the Array costs 1.5Bn to build
- 1. Payback without a subsidy it wouldn't make construction cost back **

* - 2. CO2 Payback I put 25% cos I think 2 corrections might cancel each other out : correction for CO2 used in the construction of LA against correction for the fact that the gas plant wouldn't really run at 1.2GW normally either, more like 80-90%
- 1 it's not true that electricity generated by LA produces no CO2, cos so much CO2 is produced in construction. In a £1.5Bn construction cost there has to be a hell of a lot of Energy, i.e. that £58m/year might contain 10-20% of energy used in construction
- 2. New Grain's normal output would not be 100% more like 80-90%. It might be 70%, but then LA construction energy might be 30%

I've been reading you need a hell of a lot of concrete and steel which are super energy-intensive to manufacture.
- wind websites were blase about CO2 construction payback "oh yeh the payback is usually less than 4 months". It generates £58m of electricity a yar. Are you telling me that in there is only £20m worth of energy in £1.5Bn ? you are not using donkeys to mix the concrete. I would guess 20%-30% £300m-£450m ie CO2 payback of 5-7.5 years

- Beginning to sound like a Green Elephant Project

- BBC R4 Costing The Earth have an Analysis of Windpower prog archived. It's quite negative : it shows wind is not viable . The pro-winds are furious about it. To be fair it does have a couple of bad calculations on the against side, but they also missed out a few against factors as well.

- could you use wind to separate CO2 into Carbon and oxygen so you could burn it all over again ?
- Either use wind to power electrolysis or CO2 sun balloon with holes big enough for oxygen to pass through so that wind and sun would give brownian motion and evaporate the oxygen off leaving carbon powder in the bottom of the balloon
- is there power in diamonds ?

Next :Wind Power is a bit of a Scam ?

also mentioned : http://www.pelamiswave.com/

Background notes

from http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/United_Kingdom/Electricity.html
total US Electricity capacity is 1,022,347 ie 1000 times the huge windfarm
germany 120 Gigs
UK 74.0 gigawatts in 2003
another additional 25 Gigs is expected to be constructed

- Independent on Sunday, The, Jul 31, 2005 by Jason Nisse
"RWE found that the load factor " the amount of energy produced per 1,000 MW installed " on its farms is around 16 per cent while at E.ON the figure is below 12 per cent." BTW I think E.ON is building the London Array !
- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/09/nwind09.xml farms mostly bad in tests some achieved more than 40

- In 2003, Lord Sainsbury told the House of Lords that load factor was about 30% onshore and 35% offshore (Hansard 18 November 2003: Column 1851)
- (a 2nd check on their website reveals a claim of 350Mw output, implying 35% load factor, to be fair coastal sites should achieve better results than on land, so they may well achieve higher than 16%, but 35% is very optimistic. (that why I use 30% in calculations) Even so this would give them 0.7% of current UK production, which still is magnitudes lower than press hype.

The fact they choose to write it as "it will account for 10% of the 10% of UK renewables target", ie 1% makes me trust their figures even less. Even this super optimistic 1% figure is this still magnitudes lower that the amount implied by the press.

Initial Calculations
- UK generating capacity is say 76GW
so 1000 megawatts is about 1.3% of UK electricity capacity
- production is 405TWh= average of 46GW (demand is not always high)
- of course Comparing wind power MW with conventional isn't fair cos wind would rarely get up to peak and runs very low most of the time. They claim 40%, no-one has ever achieved this German practice is 12 -16% load factor maybe that's onshore, UK observation is 26.6%, government usually says 35%, of course you can always pick a lucky month and get a higher load factor.
Really best to observe over 3 years. I'll use 30%
so average production is only 0.3GW UK
- so overall = 0.65% of UK the 46GW electricity

(http://www.clowd.org.uk/pages/clowdCarbonSavings.htm someone did a similar analysis before and downloaded the load factor to 18 %)

- remember there might be many hours when wind gives you more electricity than you need. Also bear in mind that UK energy demand will probably rise, so its production as a percentage will fall. So overall, over a 20 year plant life I think that 0.6% of UK production would just about be possible.

* my initial calculation was 0.21% cos I used 16% load factor and capacity not production. You would tend to use wind over other sources when it's available as it's almost cost free, so it's more fair to use actual production

cost of conventional fuel is 2.2p KWh wind is a considered more expensive 3.7 to 5.7p http://www.uic.com.au/nip08.htm

daily value of elecy is 158,400 which again seems bugger all against 15Bn cost = 9470 days to payback = 25 years

Maybe they could sell the LA electricity retail without taxes. It's difficult to calculate the retail value cos I don't know how much of generated electricty is lost etc cost of infrastructure running costs maintenance. If after costs it was 8p profit you'd get back £210m a year which maybe just about profitable

"Wind turbines repay their energy used in construction in about 4 months on average. So, we can estimate that total energy in manufacture is approximately 1948 MWh." you can't say this you have to calculate the cost of materials not pick a figure out of this air or wind companies advertising

"Each turbine requires a massive foundation, on order of a cube of solid concrete with steel reinforcement. The production of concrete contributes to CO2 emissions. The entire construction phase generates massive amounts of CO2 from manufacture of turbine parts, transporting parts, and assembling the turbines. Often the road systems in areas where facilities are sited need to be rebuilt to handle the equipment used in construction and transportation. A 135 foot long blade will require a rig about 150 feet in length compared to a conventional tractor/trailer combo of about 60 feet total length, not to mention the cranes needed to lift the 50+ton generator/nacelle to the top of the tower. After construction roads will need to be repaired from the damages done by heavy equipment. All of this will generate CO2. It will take years to “catch up” to the CO2 emitted by manufacture and installation of a wind turbine facility. "

The story of true cost of CO2 when you build your turbine on a peat bog
"A typical wind turbine base will contain about 1000 cubic meters of concrete weighing 2,500tonnes. About a third of weight is cement weighing 833 tonnes. This is a far cry from the REF's figure of just 0.810 tonnes per wind turbine base! In fact the REF http://www.ref.org.uk/ are out by a factor of 1028! The CO2 "payback time" is therefore extended from 3.5 years to 3,600 years"

This is a peat bog REF say without the peat payback is 15 months so on this type is 15,000 months = 1250 years according to this guys maths

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