Have you ever noticed that the rude intrusion of reality into the sustainable energy debate always hits eco-wackos hardest?
The Daily Mail UK reports on the unexpected consequences of the colder than normal British winter:
The failure of Britain’s wind farms to produce electricity in the extreme cold will cost billions of pounds, create an economic crisis and lead to blackouts, leading industrialists have warned.
To cover up the ineffectiveness of wind farms the Government will be forced to build emergency back-up power plants, the cost of which will be paid by industry and consumers.
… Industry regulator Ofgem has already calculated that the cost of achieving sustainable energy targets – set by Brussels but backed by the British Government – will amount to £200 billion, which will mean that annual household fuel bills will double to about £2,400 on average within the next ten years.
In the last quarter ending December 23, wind turbines produced on average 8.6 per cent of our electricity, but the moment the latest bad weather arrived with snow and freezing temperatures, this figure fell to as low as 1.8 per cent.
The slack was immediately taken up by efficient, but dirty, coal-fired power stations and oil-fired plants.
And we’ll bet a couple pounds that the British eco-wackos had their furnaces turned up just as high as anyone else.
Source: Daily Mail UK
This post was last modified on January 10, 2011
View Comments (18)
On our way to the Jan. 2 Seahawks game, we drove past the eyesores blighting the landscape above the mighty Columbia River near Vantage, WA. Driving west and then on the way back, driving east, I pointed out the stillness of the turbine blades, noting to by 16 year old son that somewhere there was a hydro-dam, a gas plant or a coal plant pulling up the slack for those collossul wastes of money. You could count the ones turning on 3 fingers. On the bright side, no birds were killed that day. . ..
The Seahawks are going down, Soldier Field at this time of year will be too much for them. Not to mention the Bears defense.
We can certainly hope so. Times like this I wish my home grown man, Brian Urlacher, was still healthy and kicking butte!!
Them's fightin' words!
I used to live in Bakersfield, CA, not all that far from Tehachapi, CA, windfarm central. Green technologies have always been over hyped and have always under performed...what's happening in GB should be no big suprise.
When you study on it, it all makes sense. They're obsessed with making everyone change to the stupid worm lights, and they cannot produce enough juice to light them.
We have a new symbol for the democrat party, folks.
The dim bulb.
"To cover up the ineffectiveness of wind farms the Government will be forced to build emergency back-up power plants, the cost of which will be paid by industry and consumers"
That has nothing to do with weather. The marginal coal saved by each windmill diminishes rapidly because the higher percentage of the grid is taken up by wind, the more coal or gas powered turbines need to be spinning under low load to take up the slack when the wind dies down.
Nuclear is the only true answer yet several advances in nuclear technology developed in the 90s were shelved. Look up fast breeder reactors or thorium reactors. Produce little waste and are safer. Hopefully the US will pull its collective head out of its ass before the last of the nuclear engineers that could actually build a new plant die if they haven't moved overseas already.
Amen!!!
It takes about 2,000 mega-watts per year to supply 300,000 homes. 4 coal fired plants, whose operations cover close to 10 square miles does the job. To have enough windmills to do the same job it would take 100,000 of them, scattered over 600 square miles of land. You think solar is the answer? Wrong again. A solar plant capable of producing 2,000 mega-watts of power would cover about 260 square miles of land. That means 1,664,000 acres would be needed for one solar plant to supply electricity to one small city the size of Tucson, Arizona. The plant would take up more space than the city itself.
The Palo Verde Generating Plant in Arizona is the largest nuclear power plant in the country. It produces over 30 MILLION mega-watts per year. The facility covers about 4,000 acres, less than 7 square miles. It does not pollute the air in any way. The people working there spew more stuff into the air with the cars they drive than the plant ever will. It uses no ground water. The treated sewage from the surrounding communities, including Phoenix, is used to cool the reactors. It is as close to a zero impact electric generation plant as we will ever see. It was finished in 1993 and not one nuclear plant has been built since. All because of the stupidity of the left and their tree hugging buddies, and the idiots that get elected to public office.
not to mention the power lines needed to be installed and maintained to bring power in from these 100,000 windmills.
"efficient... but dirty..." wow that tells me so much. They wants something that is clean but useless. Efficient but dirty describes... lets see... carpenters, farmers, grave diggers, miners, janitors pretty much anyone that does SOMETHING with their lives that constitutes honest work that helps many people and many times under appreciated. To say efficient but dirty to me sounds so arrogant in so many ways. Yet they would want to cram the clean but useless stuff down our throat hoping that it will work someday... what do we call a person who is crazy? Someone who does the same thing but expects different results? ah... interesting.
The problem with extreme cold is that more often the cold air is stable, meaning no wind. As the earth continues this cooling phase, theoretically there will be less wind right when you need it, during the coldest times of the year. Keep those coal plants humming!
A windmill is...
1.) A propeller, attached to...
2.) a generator.
Not a lot of room for improvement or innovation there. What you get out of them right now is all you're ever going to get, and it sure ain't much.
All we need to do is to get some liberal democrats to talk at these things for an hour. That'll thaw them out.
Last time I checked, nuclear plants emit extremely low levels of green hous gasses and can work in an any environment.
Last time I checked, the ecotistas were a bunch of irrational, deranged Luddites who are against everything. Don't waste your breath (or wear out your keyboard) trying to use reason.
Most of us (especially ex-pats) have come to the conclusion that the Former UK leads the world in sheer stupidity, coupled with ignorance and lunacy, and an unmitigated subservience to the European Fourth Reich.
If they say the British must have windmills in order to destroy the ecomomy, then windmills are what the British will have. If Europe tells Britain to shut down its coal-fired power stations, and hand over billions of pounds a year, for forty years, for the pleasure of it, then that is what Britain will do, even though it is in hideous debt.
Once at the head of an Empire, and the foundation of invention and industry, the UK is now merely a weak, toothless, economically defunct, dumbed-down plaything for the moguls in Europe, and quite frankly is a disgrace - and I'm ashamed that it's the country of my birth.
I fervently hope that, under its current administration, America doesn't go the same way. At the moment it looks ominously predictable.
I always thought that it made more sense for the UK to enter into a free trade union with the USA and Canada (with all the rest of the English-speaking countries in between, such as Ireland, Bermuda, Bahamas, Virgin Islands). It could still be NAFTA - North Atlantic Free .... Seriously now, Brits have a lot more in common with Americans than with Bulgarians or Portugese [totally non-judgemental statement]