What a wind up

[klondike]

Eminent Oxford Scientist Says Wind Power "Fails on Every Count"

It could be argued that the basic arithmetic showing wind power is an economic and societal disaster in the making should be clear to a bright primary school child. Now the Oxford University mathematician and physicist, researcher at CERN and Fellow of Keble College, Emeritus Professor Wade Allison has done the sums. The U.K. is facing the likelihood of a failure in the electricity supply, he concludes. "Wind power fails on every count," he says, adding that governments are ignoring "overwhelming evidence" of the inadequacies of wind power, "and resorting to bluster rather than reasoned analysis".

Professor Allison's dire warnings are contained in a short paper recently published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation. He notes that the energy provided by the Sun is "extremely weak", which is why it was unable to provide the energy to sustain even a small global population before the Industrial Revolution with an acceptable standard of living. A similar point was made recently in more dramatic fashion by the nuclear physicist Dr. Wallace Manheimer. He argued that the infrastructure around wind and solar will not only fail, "but will cost trillions, trash large portions of the environment and be entirely unnecessary".
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Others have recently looked in more detail at the costs of battery storage. The American lawyer and mathematician Francis Menton, who runs the Manhattan Contrarian site, reviewed recent official cost reports and found that "even on the most optimistic assumptions" the cost could be as high as a country's GDP. On less optimistic assumptions, the capital cost alone could be 15 times annual GDP. Last year, Associate Professor Simon Michaux warned the Finnish Government that there were not enough minerals in the world to supply all the batteries needed for Net Zero. Michaux observed that the Net Zero project may not go fully "as planned". Meanwhile, Menton concluded, with an opinion that some might consider unduly charitable: "It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the people planning the Net Zero transition have no idea what they are doing."

Lots of detail in the full report : https://dailysceptic.org/2023/03/25/eminent-oxford-scientist-says-wind-power-will-cost-trillions-trash-the-environment-and-be-entirely-unnecessary/

It's this and other stuff I've read that lead to me saying we would never meet our governments net zero targets in the thread about truculent barristers the other day.

[Alex]

I saw a photo recently of a turbine on fire in Germany. I looked for a photo, then found this one which is in UK

https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/wind-turbine-fire-cambridgeshire-b2064924.html

This seems to happen quite a lot in various countries.

[klondike]

I've seen several in the past myself including spinning out of control and the support breaking. They are machines and will break down. I don't hold that against them.

There are ecological problems with them having adverse impacts on wildlife but the biggest issue is that they cannot provide a complete solution to our energy needs as they and solar only offer intermittent power.

We don't have the technology to store the amount of energy to make up shortfalls when the sun doesn't shine and/or the wind doesn't blow.  Geothermal and tidal are predictable and reliable but there is nothing approaching the needed capacity in place or so far as I'm aware planned.

That leaves us with nuclear and gas necessary to make up periods of shortfall and nuclear apparently isn't something it is viable to turn up and down on a whim - it is pretty much used as a constant base load.

There were concerns that the grid may not cope this winter and that is with only a tiny proportion of electric cars. I can't see that there is any chance of ramping the grid up to replace the diesel and petrol energy that conversion to electric only cars demands in the timescale available. That is without even considering the amount of lithium needed for all the batteries worldwide.

If not reaching net zero by 2050 dooms us then I am afraid that we are doomed. The thing is I am far from convinced that is the case anyway. Early on to me it seemed simple science. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. More of it means hotter. The thing is lots of the scare stories we get are apparently not born out by satellite ice and temperature measurements which deviate from the predicted values considerably. I can't do the measurements and see wildly different claims from different sources. I no longer can be sure what the truth is. However I can be sure that we won't be achieving net zero in the supposed essential timescale.

[JBR]

I have always said that windmills are not the answer, mainly because the wind doesn't play the game and blow continuously.
Solar panels are another option, but unfortunately this is not a particularly sunny country.  In the Middle East, of course, they are a really useful asset.

No, we have far better options.
We have coal, oil and gas under our feet (and sea areas), there ready for the taking.  How many oil and gas drills are we operating?  When did our last deep coal mine close?  Why are we not fracking?
There is also the option of nuclear power and, ideally, these new Rolls-Royce SMRs which I had hoped would be in the process of building, yet our weak government seems unable to take the necessary step.

What a waste of what we already have access to, and the technology we should have not only embraced, but our apparently lost world-lead in nuclear power station development, now having to rely on the French and Chinese!  Just one aspect of our inept leadership since 1990.

[Michael Rolls]

it's the 'we must do something' syndrome believed of idiots

[Ashy]

The best "we must do something" would be to ensure that there is adequate generation and distribution capacity to meet a bit more than the anticipated demand. Like today, the wind has almost stopped blowing and we are relying on imports from the continent. Even if the sun shines it is useful for about 8 hours out of the 24 and we have no practical way of storing very much of it.

[JBR]

The best "we must do something" would be to ensure that there is adequate generation and distribution capacity to meet a bit more than the anticipated demand. Like today, the wind has almost stopped blowing and we are relying on imports from the continent. Even if the sun shines it is useful for about 8 hours out of the 24 and we have no practical way of storing very much of it.

Yes.  Nuclear power is the only reliable source of electricity.
We are still paying the French and Chinese to try to finish one traditional nuclear power plant, and I'm sure it will never actually produce any electricity!

We should be asking Rolls-Royce to build SMRs all over the country right now.
They can be up and running in much less time than the big traditional alternatives.
But no.  We have a backward-looking government, and an even more retarded one in waiting this year.

[Judd]

Exactly. And instead of having one huge nuclear power station, there could be several SMR's dotted around the country at strategic locations.

[klondike]

My sig keeps track of what percentage of electricitry demand is being met by wind turbines.

I saved this from a few minutes back. I see as I post it is even lower.



We have over 11,000 wind turbines now.

I'm just wondering where we are going to put the extra 932,000 we'd need to satisfy the demand today.

How many more will be needed on a day like this when all our cars are electric and all our buildings have swapped gas boilers for heat pumps? Just asking. I'm sure Rishi and Sir Kier must know.

[JBR]

My sig keeps track of what percentage of electricitry demand is being met by wind turbines.

I saved this from a few minutes back. I see as I post it is even lower.



We have over 11,000 wind turbines now.

I'm just wondering where we are going to put the extra 932,000 we'd need to satisfy the demand today.

How many more will be needed on a day like this when all our cars are electric and all our buildings have swapped gas boilers for heat pumps? Just asking. I'm sure Rishi and Sir Kier must know.

Absolutely.  I have always insisted that windmills will never supply the electrical power that we require, no matter how many they build.  It is a fool's dream.

I just wonder whether the powers-that-be, being not particularly bright, had the bright idea that windmills would provide electricity for free!
Well, they do provide electricity, if you can wait for the wind to blow, but it certainly isn't free.

There are not only the construction costs, the purchase of the land needed, and let's not forget that they need not only maintaining, but completely replacing when they wear out or are damaged when it is 'the wrong sort of wind' that is blowing!

[Diasi]

National Grid: Live 

https://grid.iamkate.com

[ansu]

Quite interesting - however, what about saving energy - do we need all the electric gadgets, use the car for just driving round the corner to the baker's? Sure, the wind won't be blowing constantly, the sun often is hiding behind clouds, but as to solar energy I read somewhere that they are testing solar panels that work even if the sun doesn't shine. Fracking is very dirty, destroying the environment and polluting the ground water. Alex, you are right a windmill was on fire in Germany lately, but compared to the huge number of windmills it's a "blob". Nuclear plants are dangerous, too - think of Tchernobyl, Sellafield, Fukushima and all the accidents we weren't informed of. Moreover, there's the problem with the atomic waste. Some days ago I read in our papers that meat of wild boars still shouldn't be eaten in our region as it is still irradiated due to the accident in the nuclear plant of Tchernobyl. Do you really want to leave to our grandgrandchildren such an environment - I have my doubts. 

[klondike]

I read somewhere that they are testing solar panels that work even if the sun doesn't shine.

I think it would take Harry Potter to make them produce electricity by starlight. In winter when we need energy the most in the UK and Germany too I presume there is much more night than day. That's why it's winter of course - a lot less solar energy.

With no viable means of storage solar will never be a major contributor here unless they come up with some mechanism to use solar power collection in space and send the energy down to earth. I may be a pessimist but I don't see that being onstream by 2050 when we are supposed to be running on renewables only. I don't see anything being viable to be using renewables only by 2050 TBH.

What we need are pragmatists not idealists. If we have no economies left then the environment is going to be the least of our worries.

[Ashy]

+Also a lot has been learned from the accidents at Long Island and Chernobyl whereas very little seems to have been done by way of cost benefit and land use analyses of wind farms and solar farms, and all this cheap energy is costing us a fortune.

[JBR]

In my opinion, the only reliable and consistent production of electricity is nuclear power.
Of course, critics cite the dangers.  Most nuclear power plants run without issue.  Of course there will be occasional problems.  The Japanese problem was caused by a natural disaster, although there could be arguments that the site was in the wrong place.

I maintain that the future of power production, if some future government has the will to put it in place, is the provision of SMRs.  These have been running faultlessly in our submarines for years and I now see that Rolls Royce had been asked to provide these in a foreign country (I forget which).  What a shame that our own leaders are too wishy-washy to do the same for us, and keep pushing windmills as the ultimate solution!