TelegraphUK: England is not windy enough to justify building any more onshore wind turbines, the chief executive of wind industry trade body has admitted.
Hugh McNeal, who joined RenewableUK two months ago from the Department of Energy and Climate Change, insisted the industry could make the case for more onshore turbines in some parts of the UK, despite the withdrawal of subsidies.
But he said this would “almost certainly” not be in England, as the wind speeds were not high enough to make the projects economically viable without subsidy.
Although the Government has implemented its manifesto pledge to end subsidies for new onshore wind farms, the industry believes it should be able to deploy more turbines onshore if it can show that this is the cheapest form of new power generation capacity. MORE
Here he lets the truth slip out. “…beyond those that have already secured subsidies and are awaiting construction, as they would not be cost-efficient enough to undercut gas power
ALREADY SECURED SUBSIDIES. Check.
If this wind farm bullshit weren’t subsidized, they would never ever have been built. It’s ridiculous to take tax money(or tax credits which are future tax revenues) use it to fund these monstrosities, force utility companies to buy a certain percentage of their energy in “sustainable” forms of power which results in higher energy costs to us pee-ons because utility companies are have a guaranteed ROI.
Another oops, the truth got out was his admission that “right now” electrical costs were too low. So when they go higher, then more wind farms can be built which will increase even further, energy costs.
Great fucking plan asshole. And on top of everything, he admits it’s not windy enough anyway. The stupid, it hurtz.
What a maroon. Lord.
The birds of Great Britain have received a reprieve from extinction.
With mass infiltration of muslims, it appears the British populace will not fair as well.
Subsidies are the Govt. equivalent of ‘priming the pump’
Subsidies are great ways to get loose engineer’s eyeballs onto a problem, and try to organically ‘grow’ a solution in the private sector, however as an energy policy it fails spectacularly.
As always, materials science will lead the way.
I know there is a cut-off for energy production miniaturization, but instead of building enormous bird smackers, they should concentrate on miniaturization and build thousands of tiny generators, and mount them everywhere.
Like on those crappy windmills they have now.
The further the energy sector moves away from rolling iron supplying power to the grid, the less stable the grid becomes. That massive amount of inertia is the first defense against demand exceeding supply. Windmills and PV arrays… not enough oomph to keep the grid together.
As more and more traditional steam-driven turbine generators fall into permanent shutdown, we will begin to see the practical fallacy of “alternative energy” in the form of blackouts and grid separations.
Another big trend today is “demand response,” that is, industrial and commercial electricity consumers being paid to NOT use power, and the grid operators essentially tally these megawatts as generation when it is called upon. As generation resources decline, how long will it be until they are utilizing residential load in the same manner, but without the recompense?
The phrase “not economically viable without subsidy” should have been enough to kill this crap before it started. If it’s not viable WITHOUT subsidies, it can’t be viable WITH them. Costs are the same with or without subsidies, so there can only be profits if returns are higher than unsubsidized costs. Anything else is just wealth transfer. Economics 101 duh.
Should be unsubsidized returns are higher than total costs. Sorry.