Scotland sets renewable record as wind power provides equivalent of 118% of nation's electricity

source content cannot be posted due to copyright issues | 24 July 2017

[nicollo]

Awesome, why not just drop a nuke over the North Sea and claim you’ve met energy needs for the next 300 years?

[ully2]

sounds like a Gorbasm.

[Pining_4_TX]

OK, you’re probably a science guy, so I have some questions. Somebody posed that these giant wind turbines could be messing with the climate by disrupting wind patterns - making things hotter (wind does cool the surface of the earth) and perhaps causing droughts. Is this a possibility? I would love to see the headline, “Wind Power Causing Global Warming and Drought”.

Of course, that is in addition to all the birds, including endangered species, and bats they kill.

[RetiredTexasVet]

Actually, it was written that way on purpose. The power generator propaganda office handed the journalist a pre-written article that was written above the journalist’s third grade education.

[Peter ODonnell]

Och, when the wind is nae blowing?

What’s that laddie on about?

[Nero Germanicus]

I’m for any energy source that moves us toward self-reliance.
Top Ten Nations Exporting Crude Oil to the U.S. June, 2017
1) Canada-currently run by leftist Trudeau
2) Saudi Arabia-Islamic fundamentalust monarchy
3) Venezuela-Communist dictatorship
4) Mexico- Narco-state
5) Columbia-Narco-state
6) Iraq-Islamic Republic
7) Ecuador-Left Wing Social Democracy
8) Nigeria-Constant war zone in oil development regions, 50% Muslim
9) Kuwait-Islamic Republic
10) Angola- African One Party dictatorship

[Pontiac]

Somebody posed that these giant wind turbines could be messing with the climate by disrupting wind patterns - making things hotter (wind does cool the surface of the earth) and perhaps causing droughts.

Patterns, I don’t know but if I had t guess I would say yes; because they locate them on tops of low mountains which in effect make the mountain higher.

It is a fact that they do mess with heat layer stratification. That is warm or cool air close to the ground and a corresponding opposite layer above. The wind turbine cause mixing of layers of atmosphere near the ground.

What effects this mixing has on climate is yet to be determined. If ever.

[Pining_4_TX]

Still, it would be a great headline, no? The green Nazis would have fits.

[Teacher317]

You can’t generate electric power that is not used.
If you generate more power than the grid needs you end up heating your transmission lines and windings on your transformers. You cause damage to your hardware.
The people that control the grid go to a lot of trouble to balance supply and demand.

Most people seem to assume that we have giant batteries that store any unused extra power.

Last year, LA was crowing about having a battery storage system comprised of 18,000 battery modules making "the world’s largest storage battery, capable of holding and delivering over 100 megawatts of power an hour for four hours."

Four hours... and 100MW is barely enough for 15,000 homes... and that's if they successfully build the largest-ever by 2021... and LA has about 3 million homes, by the way...

unless something radical comes along, batteries are not going to be a significant solution.

[aquila48]

Whoever wrote that article was on drugs. It’s incomprehensible.

[crz]

The way it has been going, my cousin Scots will backslide back into the middle ages if they dont wake up.

[crz]

Wae s tha laddie o aboot?

[samtheman]

Woo hoo!! Now they can shut down all their coal-fired generators and run their country on wind power—for 12 whole days per year.

---

If I was a 5th grade science teacher and one of my students wrote this story I would compliment her writing ability (which is somewhat above a 5th grade level) but be forced to give her an F for logic... and I might consider calling child services regarding the possibility of child abuse in the home, because the poor kid is obviously so deranged she can’t think straight and seems to have become detached from reality.

[BitWielder1]

OMG!!!! The BS meter is spinning out of control and is about to explode!

Too bad we can't attach a generator to said spinning BS meter, we'd have unlimited power.

[adorno]

6 months to produce 6 days worth of electricity

Actually, using the numbers from the article, it's more like 3 days, and not the 6. They're using creative accounting to make it sound a lot better than it is, and even what they make sound good, is really lousy and wrong.

[j. earl carter]

... The power generator propaganda office ..

That's a really good description and probably very accurate.

[Pontiac]

Four hours... and 100MW is barely enough for 15,000 homes..

100 Megawatts is a small peaking plant. 4 hours might get you through the hottest part of a day. It could be useful.

However an important thing to remember is that batteries are at best about 60% efficient and they have a limited number of charge cycles. They are very expensive storage devices with limited life spans.

Batteries would be my last choice for a storage medium. But heck politicians don’t have to worry about cost, just votes. And California politicians don’t even have to worry about votes.

[sauropod]

SA