This may be of interest to the more expert of our readers who can probably show me where I have gone wrong in my calculations…the BBC are pretty quick to highlight apparent success of power generation by ‘renewables’…but should they be digging a bit deeper…are wind turbines any where near as good as even the very modest claims that are made for them?
Having seen the BBC report on Scottish renewables I had a look and checked some of the figures…not being a climate expert, or technically literate or brilliant with numbers this may be all wrong but have a look yourself:
Scotland produces 126% of its power needs.
Of that 26.8% is generated by renewables.
Around 36% of ‘consumed’ power comes from renewables.
The rest comes from conventional sources.
Consumed power is obviously 100% of Scotland’s needs and yet it generates 126%……the surplus is exported.
Those figures suggest that conventional sources still produce 99.2% of power generated as renewables produce 26.8% in total. (You could claim renewables only produce 0.8% of Scottish power depending how you report the figures)
Therefore Scotland is paying for all the renewable sources on top of its conventional capacity which could by itself still keep the lights on in Scotland.
Scotland gets money back for its exported power…but is it at a price that repays the investment in renewables that produce it? And what happens when they have closed the sources of that power down…the revenue stream that subsidises renewables dries up?
It is also apparent that wind farms are not producing anywhere near the power that they promise…it is hydro that is producing the bulk of the renewable power and in a far more efficient way…and that is considering hydro is itself only (I believe) 25-30% efficient…whilst the Scottish government claims wind is uniquely 40% efficient in Scotland.
In 2011:
Onshore wind capacity = 3.6 Gw…..it generated 7,004 GwHr
Hydro capacity …………= 1.5 Gw……it generated 5,332 GwHr
Giving a generation figure per Gw of capacity:
OSW….1945.5 GwHr/Gw capacity
Hydro…3554.7 GwHr/Gw capacity
Hydro is more expensive but it looks far more efficient at converting capacity to actual power.
I could be wrong…check it yourself…used this site (one unlikely to downplay the ‘success’ of renewables) for the figures and also this site from the Scottish Government.
Whilst CO2 reduction is the only game in town it seems that the wind turbine is not the answer.
No one has told the BBC yet…or they certainly aren’t telling us.
I would not worry about the Carbon substance.
The final calculations for calibrating carbon dioxide warming in the 20th century have produced a warming of 0.007 Kelvin.
So I am just waiting for everyone else to find this out.
First of all, I am waiting for a number of scientific papers to be published, as follow ups from the Unified Theory of Climate, then you may find them on sceptic blogs, then I hope everyone will understand why we now have all the answers to any questions that may be asked about temperatures in planetary atmospheres, past and present.
But you are not going to see any of this on the BBC, unless everyone refuses to pay the compulsory Licence Fee Tax, and demand perestroika and glasnost.
Germany, Spain and Denmark also found out that ‘cheap’ wind power is the most expensive form of energy generation.
Germany:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/10/10/us-germany-energy-renewables-idUKBRE8990PC20121010
Spain
http://www.masterresource.org/2011/04/spanish-wind-revisited/
Denmark:
http://www.aweo.org/problemwithwind.html
Ah, well. Glad i live in France.
Me, too!
In a nutshell this is the energy crisis facing the UK:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/9889184/One-day-turning-off-the-lights-wont-be-up-to-you.html
How Scotland dress up the proportion renewables produce for them is largely irrelevant to the UK as a whole, especially if it’s the BBC who are spinning the story. However:
‘Around lunchtime last Monday, for instance, National Grid was showing that all our 4,300 wind turbines put together were providing barely a thousandth of the power we were using, 0.1 per cent, or a paltry 31MW (as compared with the 2,200MW we can get from a single gas-fired plant). ‘
That was the UK picture, so even in Scotland there are times when the wind doesn’t blow and they have to fall back on conventional power sources – which is where we come back to the BBC, because as far as I’m aware they have never, ever acknowledged that you need conventional power stations in a permanent state of standby for when the wind doesn’t blow, burning those evil fossil fuels but thankfully keeping our lights on (if only).
I didn’t hear Any Questions today but I did hear some of the phone-in. Wind farms had obviously been discussed and unsurprisingly those listeners in favour had their texts and e-mails read out and therefore went unchallenged – these were full of copybook environmentalist mantras and included the usual lies such as Germany abandoning nuclear and going for renewables and creating loads of green jobs. Those phoning in were against, and had their views challenged rigorously. In other words, the same old same old biased BBC.
The BBC – doing its eco-fascist best to bring economic destruction to a country near you.
This is an excellent example of the Truism: “There’s Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.”
Over a period of time, they may well be right; but instantaneously, renewables struggle to exceed 25%.
FACT: For the entire 2012 year and the UK as a whole, all 105,254 5-minute readings provided by National Grid resulted in Wind + Hydro contributing just 5% towards Demand. Maximum entire UK supply via Wind + Hydro was 0.01% of Demand.
Source: Download (top right-hand corner) & analyse the 105,254 Rows of Data from:-
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
NB The Beeb article referred to just Scotland; the Nat Grid info is for the UK. (Hence my caveat “may”)
Oooops – my typo:-
“Maximum entire UK supply via Wind + Hydro was 0.01% of Demand.” should read “Minimum entire UK supply via Wind + Hydro was 0.01% of Demand.”
Wind power is currently meeting less than 3% of our power needs – and today is a good day for wind power – it is often very much lower.
Checkout the contribution the various types of power generation are making in real time here –
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
Hydro is actually quite efficient, but it is limited in supply, but it has the great advantage that it can be switched on an off within a few seconds and so can be used to fill in the gaps in supply in the National Grid’s supply as the demand changes. This gives the hydro companies a much higher price than other generators, and switching the hydro turbines off leaves the energy store (water in the reservoir) available for later use. I would guess that the higher price / intermittent use means that most hydro is effectively exported to the English National Grid- although I am not sure how you would determine that.