Official: Wind Farms Are Totally Useless

Wind farms: scarring the English countryside (Photo: John Taylor)

Wind farms: scarring the English countryside (Photo: John Taylor)

Before I take my break, I cannot resist drawing your attention to a new report on wind farms – perhaps the most damning I have ever read. What makes it even more significant is that it has been sponsored by an environmental charity. Normally the people most busily pushing these bird-chomping, bat-crunching, taxpayer-fleecing monstrosities on our magnificent landscape are those who claim, ludicrously, to be green. Thank you, John Muir Trust, for reminding as that being green doesnt necessarily have to include economically suicidal schemes to destroy perhaps our greatest national asset: the British countryside.

Heres its summary:

PRINCIPAL FINDINGS in respect of analysis of electricity generation from all the U.K. windfarms which are metered by National Grid, November 2008 to December 2010. The following five statements are common assertions made by both the wind industry and Government representatives and agencies. This Report examines those assertions.

“Wind turbines will generate on average 30% of their rated capacity over a year.”

“The wind is always blowing somewhere.”

“Periods of widespread low wind are infrequent.”

“The probability of very low wind output coinciding with peak electricity demand is slight.”

“Pumped storage hydro can fill the generation gap during prolonged low wind periods.”

This analysis uses publicly available data for a 26 month period between November 2008 and December 2010 and the facts in respect of the above assertions are:

Average output from wind was 27.18% of metered capacity in 2009, 21.14% in 2010, and 24.08% between November 2008 and December 2010 inclusive.

There were 124 separate occasions from November 2008 till December 2010 when total generation from the windfarms metered by National Grid was less than 20MW. (Average capacity over the period was in excess of 1600MW).

The average frequency and duration of a low wind event of 20MW or less between November 2008 and December 2010 was once every 6.38 days for a period of 4.93 hours.

At each of the four highest peak demands of 2010 wind output was low being respectively 4.72%, 5.51%, 2.59% and 2.51% of capacity at peak demand.

The entire pumped storage hydro capacity in the UK can provide up to 2788MW for only 5 hours then it drops to 1060MW, and finally runs out of water after 22 hours.

Related posts:

  1. Wind Farms: the death of Britain
  2. Sorry, but wind farms are useless even against vampires
  3. Wind farms kill whales: blubber on the green movement’s hands
  4. Wind farms: even worse than we thought…

10 thoughts on “Official: wind farms are totally useless”

  1. Walt O’Brien says:7th April 2011 at 3:33 amWell, the other bit is they are a super device for hoovering up British subsidies ostensibly intended for British developers which are instead shell corporations for foreign interests which are taking the money the British taxpayer shells out for these monstrosities and pockets them offshore. They are a real job for the SFO, IMHO.

    A happy and safe vacation, and do something about the bloggatosis twitches, if this routine has chewed on your mind at all to the extent your feel a little suspicious of your own behaviour. The story of Hercules in its original version is the first clinical portrayal of PTSD, and he wasn’t fighting Viet Cong, he was fighting himself.

    Where the DT finds such achievers I have no idea, but I get the impression it is another General Electric or Rolls Royce: the best fuel yields the brightest flame, but who cares about the ashes, right? As Otto Lilienthal put it in his last words when he was dying as a result of trying out a new wing configuration on his test glider: “Sacrifices must be made.”

    I still want a piece of your editor. This was meant to be your apprenticeship and instead it has been damn near a hazing.

  2. Walt O’Brien says:8th April 2011 at 7:17 amHello, James. Thought you might be interested in who are possibly your main tormentors arisen from the depths of Hell, paid or otherwise.

    Please take a look at who is the contact person here, then please check with Damien to see if the IP address gives a location anywhere near Amherst, NY: Tonawanda, Buffalo, etc.

    http://jobs.powermag.com/c/job.cfm?vnet=0&str=1&max=25&site_id=2669&sort=date_&jb=7814219

    Sorry, I am just completely exhausted with blogging altogether by these bar stewards. Do have a nice vacation. That they should go to the lengths they have indicates with what significant effectuality your work has put a properly cobbled bespoke boot into their smelly crab-infested groins.

    General Physics, BTW, are major-league consultants to the utilities on climate change and carbon trading. Please check out their ‘Climate Change” offerings.

    I rather suspect this would amuse Lord Tebbit as well.

  3. chris says:8th April 2011 at 5:48 pmPlease don’t stop writing about inefficient wind farms and their outrageous subsidies.

    Eventually, the lights are going to go out.

  4. Velocity says:9th April 2011 at 9:04 pma technology backed (subsidised, tax breaks, funded etc) by Govt …you can 100% guarantee it’s a pile of crap (see buses, trains, electric cars etc)

    ..add Windfarms to the list of crap

  5. David says:10th April 2011 at 4:03 pmEveryone who claims that wind farms are completely useless is wrong. Every effort to promote the sources which produce electricity and protect the environment at the same time is worth making.
  6. Don Stuart says:11th April 2011 at 10:23 am‘David’ – What do you mean ‘protect the environment’? In what way do windmills protect the environment?

    You’ve said absolutely nothing there. Typical windy rhetoric from a flatulent greenie.

  7. Nige Cook says:11th April 2011 at 12:28 pm“The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” said Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (“L’enfer est plein de bonnes volontés et désirs”).
  8. Axel says:15th April 2011 at 1:29 amLord Monckton is standing as a candidate for election to the Scottish Parliament on 5th May 2011. Vote UKIP in Mid-Scotland & Fife to GET MONCKTON ELECTED. Let’s all hear Lord Monckton lambast the Carbon Fraudsters on a Daily Basis in
    The Scottish Parliament. All you Scottish voters in the forthcoming Scottish Elections
    who want to see the Carbon Hoaxes and Frauds brought to an end have a clear choice
    for an eloquent voice to speak on their behalf on the Public Stage at long last.
    Vote UKIP to get Lord Monckton elected and the Carbon Crooks Exposed.

    See the website linked to my name. Click the name Axel above to see loads of Lord Monckton Videos and other materials. Hundreds of arcane videos at that website.

  9. Nige Cook says:19th April 2011 at 12:26 pmAxel: I think the CO2 AGW killer is figure 4 in Roy Spencer, et al., “Cloud and radiation budget changes associated with tropical intraseasonal oscillations,” published in the Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 34, shttp://www.drroyspencer.com/Spencer_07GRL.pdf

    It proves that increasing cloud cover from extra ocean evaporation due to CO2 warming reduces the thermal radiation getting through: negative feedback. All IPCC models ignore this and assume water has a positive feedback effect. That’s why the greenhouse effect is a myth: no greenhouse is 71% ocean with 62% cloud cover, like earth. It’s not rocket science. If you look at the asymptotic limit for a boiling ocean, the rising, condensing steam droplets would give us 100% cloud cover. Any temperature rise of the warm ocean surface layer will increase cloud cover, producing negative feedback. The scandal is that all the predicted temperature rise of CO2 AGW is supposed to be due to positive feedback, which doesn’t exist.

  10. Velocity says:19th April 2011 at 6:32 pmAxel – great news, i truly hope Lord M gets elected but i fear the Scotts are a lost cause (sooner England peels away from them the better). Here’s your average Scottish voters choice;

    Labour Party (Marxists)
    Liberal Party (closet Marxists)
    SNP (Marxists)
    Conservatives (Socialists)

    Let’s hear it for ‘democracy’ (pass the sickbag)… Scotland is well and truly f**ked and they deserve it quite frankly!

Comments are closed.

Liked it? Take a second to support James on Patreon!