Wind Power It's Great Isn't It ?
Free Electrity - almost zero CO2

I certainly don't agree with the normal quick rebuttal : the wind doesn't blow all the time - so you need 1 coal power station running on standy per windfarm.
1 - low output might often coincide with periods of low demand like in the middle of the night.
2 - If you have enough windfarms spread about they might well balance each out.

want the quick answer ? - 1 The construction cost is huge 10 times the materials of a gas plant - 2 The electricty they produce is unreliable so has low value - 3 IT'S A VERY EXPENSIVE WAY OF REDUCING CO2 - Each dollar invested in wind, will reduce less CO2 than each dollar invested in gas - 4 You need to keep 90% of standby generation for a Windless day - 5 Hydrogen solution has insurmountable large losses - 6 The Dynamics mean windpower is cool with greenies politicians & the media

REMINDER : 1 Nothing is as good as not consuming in the first place

REMINDER : 2 FREE zero CO2 power would be an absolute disaster
as people would just use it to consume more raw materials

If you can understand maths read this example first

e.g. 1 - Outside Melbourne Nasty Corp has 2 1.2GW coal plants each spewing out X tonnes of CO2 a year
- Green Energy go and see Nice Mr Rudd and offer to build a huge Windfarms to replace one of the coal
- Kev says .. how much CO2 will you save in 20 years you say accounting for CO2 used in construction that's X so 19X CO2 saved .. sounds good
- Kev says .. hey what about when the winds not blowing ?
- Well we'll spread it around we'll have 3 1GW farms in different ends of the state so they'll balance each other out.
- ..one thing Mr Rudd it'll cost £4.5Bn to build plus another £0.9bn to decommission and we'll make 3.6Bn from the electricity
- so can we have say a £1.8Bn subsidy

- ... a few days later Nasty Corp go and visit Rudd
-Kev ... "You'll have to get rid of of one of those Coal Stations, you know ..too much CO2"
- .. yes we are going close them both and replace them with gas
- .. Well that'll still throw out CO2 !
- yes but the gas is 60% less CO2 so each will throw out 0.4X a total of 0.8X so we'll be saving 1.2X tonnes a year
- ..1.2X eh gonna cost a lot isn't it yes
- -£900m construction + £0.2Bn decommissioning
- well your gonna use as much CO2 in construction as the wind boys ?
- - well since we use 80% less materials its 80% less CO2 about 0.2X tonnes .
- So over 20 years we save 23.8X tonnes
- Well how much subsidy do you want ?
- subsidy ? none -
- So that's 23.8X Co2 saved and no subsidy !
-- yes do you want to come and play golf with us this afternoon Kev ?

- (Demien claims the costs aren't right. I disagree, Firstly I used the costs for off-shore I used the actual costs of the London Array as surely it's going to be one of the most economic windfarms ever ? Onshore would be cheaper, but I would have to use a much lower loading factor say 25%, I used a optimistic average load factor of 33%.)

- Intro - While other people spend their lives in the forest of life, I live a rather detached life standing outside the forest looking in, which gives me a rather different perspective. Even though I am an Electrical Engineer I hadn't thought much about Windpower. On the news I heard UK politician say something about 50% of future electrical power will come from wind. One month later on a science show I heard a "reporter" do a report "about the huge new London Array windfarm", but a soon as she mentioned the Mega Watt power I realised far from being huge the power it supplies will be quite small.

- I checked the facts. I found that the wind power companies routinely present figures in a misleading ways. One of these is they talk about the peak power, instead of the possible average output, which in turn is higher that the average power over time in real operation. In fact you'd be lucky to get 30% of the power. Not only that, but the construction cost would be 10 times the cost of a gas plant of similar output and would not be covered by the value of electricity generated over the 20 year lifetime.

- Wow I decided to investigate further. The first thing I found was a Newsnight Blog discussion about home 1KW turbines which are becoming popular; even Tory leader David Cameron has one. It became apparent that again the practical experience was disappointingly lower than the sales hype. They are not the surefire ecological winner they are made out to be.They cost £1900 intalled, in the best area they might generate £57 wholesale value of electricity a year, but in fact in most areas the output would be far lower. It seems CO2 in manufacturing and installation in most uses would be more than CO2 saved in 20 years. One remote farm was getting by on a £12,000 2.5KW turbine plus diesel, but even he is not breaking even and is probably a net emitter of CO2. Smaller turbines are a net emitter of CO2, so marketing of them as green is a scam, what about large wind farms ?

- I already suspected they weren't the panacea they were are made out to be otherwise they wouldn't need a subsidy.

First I did extensive research

Page 2. Windfarm Facts Step by Step

Page 3. Windfarm Follow The Maths

Page 4. Windfarms - Fact Breakdown - What They Say

Page 5. My Own Brainstorming about possible improvements to wind

Page 6. Windfarms - Background Notes

......... Page 2 Intro -->

My Climate Blog INDEX FEEDBACK