Posted on 05/12/2017 12:19:49 PM PDT by all the best
The Global Wind Energy Council recently released its latest report, excitedly boasting that ‘the proliferation of wind energy into the global power market continues at a furious pace, after it was revealed that more than 54 gigawatts of clean renewable wind power was installed across the global market last year’. You may have got the impression from announcements like that, and from the obligatory pictures of wind turbines in any BBC story or airport advert about energy, that wind power is making a big contribution to world energy today. You would be wrong. Its contribution is still, after decades — nay centuries — of development, trivial to the point of irrelevance. Here’s a quiz; no conferring. To the nearest whole number, what percentage of the world’s energy consumption was supplied by wind power in 2014, the last year for which there are reliable figures? Was it 20 per cent, 10 per cent or 5 per cent? None of the above: it was 0 per cent. That is to say, to the nearest whole number, there is still no wind power on Earth.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.co.uk ...
The whole concept was obviously absurd from the beginning.
Does shoveling up the dead birds count as a green job?
Wind farming ... just another government black money hole boondoggle!!
Here’s a quiz; no conferring. To the nearest whole number
Harsh, descriptive language assures that nobody under 30 will even be able to take the racist quiz without needing therapy first.
A whole lot of ugly for nothing.
Thanks, greenies.
Enough to power a led light in the hen house-but they would get chopped up anyway.
Wind farms enough to supply 100% of the USA’s energy needs would require a bit more land area than the state of Nevada.
Nukular power plants to supply 100% of the USA’s energy needs would need a bit less land area than Dallas County.
Such a plan would render Nevada uninhabitable by humans, but not Dallas County.
Commercial wind generators require a minimum wind speed of 10-12 mph or their electrical output is ZERO. There are very few places in the US that consistently have wind speeds of that magnitude and far fewer (if any) that have that much wind 24/7/365. So who’s going to pay for the overhaul to the power distribution infrastructure to get all the electricity from those few and isolated places with that much wind (because people as a rule avoid living in those places) to the many places where it is consumed?
Just like the wings on airplanes, when the atmospherics are right, the blades on windmills are highly susceptible to icing. Uneven ice loading (or uneven shedding of ice) can produce an imbalance that will cause the fan to sling itself apart. So even though the blades on commercial wind generators are equipped with heated anti-icing mats, as a self-preservation measure they are programmed to shut down whenever significant ice accumulation occurs.
They also are programmed to shut down whenever winds become abnormally high to prevent damage from overspeeding.
Which means that at times when the electricity they generate would be most desperately needed (winter ice and snow storms), they are likely to be offline.
Self-destructing wind generators: http://bit.ly/2pGOQkE
Because the intermittent failure of renewable sources (wind & solar) is GUARANTEED, the supply of current to a power grid must be stable and regular beyond what “renewables” are capable of. The Euros’ rule of thumb is that for every 100 Watts of renewables they use to power the grid, they must have a minimum of 80 watts (80%) available from conventional sources (nukular or dead dinosaurs) in a condition called “spinning reserve” that can come online instantaneously each time renewable power browns out. Otherwise, the grid is likely to collapse whenever the “renewables” take an unscheduled coffee break.
So not only do “renewables” NOT obsolete conventional power plants, they reinforce the need for them. There’s not been a single conventional power plant decommissioned anywhere in Europe because it was made obsolete by “renewables.” And there’s ZERO chance that they ever will reduce your energy bill by one red cent (unless you build your own personal wind farm) because you still will be paying for (at least) 80% of the old, conventional power system to remain in operation just so you can delude yourself into thinking you’ve done the planet a favor by “going green.”
Millions of birds have been killed by wind turbines.
Non sequitur.
Weird how the left who have their animal right groups do not care about the birds which keep getting killed, including the great American Bald Eagle.
Rusting heaps littering the landscape, a homage to the “global Warming” green movement. Of course it will be Trump’s fault.
Rusting heaps littering the landscape, a homage to the “global Warming” green movement. Of course it will be Trump’s fault.
“How can you put a price on feeling good. Every time you see those monuments to government action I’m reminded that I personally, am saving the planet. They make me feel good and that’s what’s really important. SO they don’t provide much energy. So they kill protected birds and bats. So their low freq harmonics drive people crazy. I feel good, Vestas gets massive subsidies, Siemens makes a fortune, politicians get huge kick backs, and that’s what’s really important.” -Liberal
Probably not, but Michelle Obama might be happy to recycle them into some school lunches. ;-)
They can be useful for bringing electricity to areas that are too remote and too sparsely populated to justify the construction of a power plant and electrical grid, but they’re also unreliable because they don’t work on windy days and have to be throttled back on really windy days and they do require maintenance.
So... part-time supplemental power to a few people in niche markets.
I have an apt title for this report,
“Wind From The Other End.”
Correction: Don’t work on “windless” days.
Just like the Sierra Club does not care about the damage and tons of trash left by illegal aliens in our sensitive desert habitats.
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