Arecleoch Wind Farm | Mary and Angus Hogg.
While British people can’t afford to warm their own homes in winter some Scottish wind turbines are being rotated and de-iced with warmth from diesel generators which also leaked some 4,000L of diesel. Since this was due to a cabling fault, presumably the other shivering wind turbines are maintained with mains power?
If giant turbine blades sit still too long, the bearings can generate permanent Brinelling damage. Alternately micro-oscillations or vibrations can cause False Brinelling. Small metal fragments then grind more of the metal around it, reduce efficiency, and increase the friction, the heat and the fire risk. It’s a couple of the hidden costs of maintaining a vast network of infrastructure to collect low density energy. Coal turbines must be slowly rotated too, to avoid the shaft bending, but coal turbines run for months at a stretch without stopping. One coal turbine can weigh up to 600 tons, but wind turbines nacelles usually weigh 100-300 tons, but can weigh up to 700 tons)*. The largest wind turbine blades can weigh 35 tons each. The power-to-maintenance ratio of wind turbines is absurd.
The wind turbine industry today is like the jet engine industry of the 1950s. It will take decades of work to fine tune it and figure out true maintenance costs. The difference between jets and wind turbines is that in 1950 we knew we needed jets, but wind turbines are only useful in the fantasy land of junk climate models.
If ever there was proof that wind power is a national security issue, a rort, and a risk…
Dozens of Scottish Wind Turbines Powered by Diesel Generators, Pour Hydraulic Oil Into Countryside
Jack Montgomery, Breitbart
Scottish Power — led by a Spaniard, Ignacio Galan, and actually a subsidiary of Spanish firm Iberdrola — conceded that some 71 of its turbines had to be hooked up to diesel generators to keep them warm in December, according to the Sunday Mail, with a whistleblower telling the left-leaning newspaper that problems with the turbines are deep-seated.
“During December 60 turbines at Arecleoch and 11 at Glenn App were de-energised due to a cabling fault… In order to get these turbines re-energised diesel generators were running for upwards of six hours a day,” they revealed.
“Turbines are regularly offline due to faults where they are taking energy from the grid rather than producing it, and also left operating on half power for long periods due to parts which haven’t been replaced,” they continued.
… the Record went on to say that some 4,000 litres (over 1,000 U.S. gallons) of leaking hydraulic oil was “sprayed over the countryside” by the turbines
Maintenance is a nightmare according to a whistleblower from the wind industry who spoke to The Record:
He also claimed there had been other technical issues and environmental problems discovered. They include:
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- Turbines left operating on half power for long periods due to faulty convertor modules.
- Others in “test mode” where they take rather than contribute electricity to the grid.
- Over 4000 litres of oil leaked from hydraulic units on turbines and sprayed over the countryside.
- Concerns about safety standards and transparency.
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The whistleblower said: “Turbines are regularly offline due to faults where they are taking energy from the grid rather than producing it, and also left operating on half power for long periods due to parts which haven’t been replaced.
Scottish Power’s Spanish chairman was reported to earn £11 million in 2021.
Richard Tice, the leader of the Reform Party pointed out that some 83 per cent of Britain’s offshore wind turbines are foreign-owned. (The Reform Party was formerly the Brexit Party).
*It’s hard to even compare the maintenance costs of coal and wind. Engineers reading here may be able to help figure out the comparative weight and performance of wind turbines which are rapidly growing in size and made up of rotors, nacelles and blades. Their weights are often reported in ambiguous terms and as TonyfromOz points out, in toto only have a capacity factor of 30%. Obviously, the more wind there is in a system the more maintenance coal power requires as well. Just another burden from “renewables”.
h/t Krishna Gans, Saighdear, Richard K.
Welcome to the Ruinables revolution where failure is to be expected because as Warren Buffet astutely notices they are not valuable investments:
US News Reports
Big Wind’s Bogus Subsidies
By Nancy Pfotenhauer
|
May 12, 2014
Excerpt:
Despite being famous for touting the idea that the rich don’t pay their fair share of taxes, investor Warren Buffet seems to be perfectly fine with receiving tax breaks for making investments in Big Wind. “I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire’s tax rate,” Buffet told an audience in Omaha, Nebraska recently. “For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”
LINK
Bolding mine
==========
That was known 9 years ago.
Haw haw haw haw haw…….
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I hope your not implying that the elite investor class would promote or(and) tacitly encourage a climate emergency narrative simply for tax advantage.
Or as access to to large piles of taxpayer money that government hands out to favored donors with a winked assurance of no oversight.
Or that they would promote such false narratives with their toy media possessions.
They would certainly never engage in such with a global health crisis.
(Bill Gate’s recent returns on his health sector investments were just smart investment strategy … plain old good luck.)
Plus this is a ‘right wing’ blog where such implications are never implied because the educated credentialed professional elite, and Science itself, (the credentialed elite being the anointed representatives of Science on Earth), are unabashedly revered.
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you’re
editing errors take the edge off of sarcasm
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Wind energy is 64% of the non-carbon based energy owned by Berkshire Hathaway (aka Warren Buffet); about a dozen companies.
Through our subsidiaries MidAmerican Energy Company and PacifiCorp, we are No. 1 in the nation in ownership of wind-powered electric generation among rate-regulated utilities.
Berkshire also owns candy and underwear and . . . ∞
https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/subs/sublinks.html
When the parts of B/H start to under perform, expect those to be sold to another, and then maybe another, until only scrap value is left.
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Brinelling would also cause sound at an audible frequency.
30
The major difference between power station shafts and wind turbine shafts is that those in power stations are supported by bearings all the way along, whereas those of wind turbines are only supported by bearings at one end. Hence a big problem for wind turbines!
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Just to clarify, a steam turbine would have a bearing at each end and with no overhanging load on the end of the shaft. Windmills have the blades overhanging at one end of the shaft that will have two bearings. But the real problem is that the bearings are too small to take the static weight of the shaft assembly which causes to rollers to be pushed into the races in a similar way to the Brinell Hardness Test which pushes a ball under a known load into a metal to determine the hardness. If the bearing was designed to take the static load it would absorb most of the energy input just to overcome the friction. Some heavy shaft assemblies across many industries keep the shafts rotating slowly to prevent brinelling.
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Ah aye Jo, th’ scots turbines hae tae be kept taps aff wi’ th’ de’il diesel. ‘n’ loads o’ dinosaur ginger as weel
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The most annoying comment is, “well if the wind blows and sun shines, you may as well use it.”
The reasons for being so annoying, are listed above. You just have to think a little more. It’s not that simple.
And even more annoying is that these people giving this comment, have actually considered the topic, and come up with this as a conclusion. For people who don’t think about the topic at all and agree with wind energy – “yeah like whatever, its futuristic I dig the fins” – I don’t find as annoying. But if you have actually considered the topic and you come up with this? That is highly annoying.
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Sun and wind are ‘free’. So is water. Strange How I seem to get such high water bills. Perhaps there is something called infrastructure that means something free isn’t actually ‘free’ and without the equivalent of water reservoirs, weather dependent renewables are only available when the weather gods are smiling.
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coal, lignite, peat, oil, gas, shale are all free. And the cost of harvesting is far lower and you
need a hundredth of the wiring and a tiny fraction of the lost land.
Most windmills in fifty years will all be dead, dead, dead.
Coal power stations will still be running because like any factory, they are infinitely serviceable.
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Morning TdeF,
Overall I agree with you, but I do think “infinitely”is a bit optimistic.
Cheers
Dave B
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I take your point with the word. My meaning is that of my grandfather’s axe with five new heads and six new handles. With that level of service the life of the axe is infinite.
With windmills in the open ocean, I doubt that twenty years from now any part will be replaceable. A bit like fixing old bridges.
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My hammer is 100 years old and still doing its job. I have to say it has had 20 new handles and 10 new heads
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Wind is free but a sailing boat is often described as a hole in water that requires money to be thrown in regularly.
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I think ‘the wind is always blowing somewhere’ is the most annoying and moronic comment that the idiots come out with.
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What we need are micro treadmills for ants. They might not generate much power or for much of the day, but otherwise the logic is the same. If you spend enough money you will get something back, maybe.
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Another very recently on a blog explained that solar is free and comes from the stars day and night.
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That’s what they said about the team that is going travel to and explore the sun. They’re going at night. ToM
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Not only diesel power,
Look at the environmental vandalism of the operators.
https://www.scottishpowerrenewables.com/pages/arecleoch_windfarm.aspx
If you want to actually see the Arecleoh windfarm that is so environtmentally friendly?
You can see it with your own eyes.
—–
This is the google map, satellite view, of Arecleoh windfarm, the “sustainable” madness that is our future.
https://earth.google.com/web/@55.06108013,-4.8626449,241.83782512a,4564.45661063d,35y,0h,0t,0r
Look at the access roads, the desecration of pristine land. The madness.
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William
Good link. You need to zoom out on the second link to get the full flavour of the devastation
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If a farmer did that to make his farm more productive and easier to manage the Land and Environment Court would put him out of business. The environment comes last with these rapists who are saving the planet. Remember the “We had to destroy the village to save it from the VC”?
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I know that part of my country of birth pretty well and I weep think of what is happening to it, not just the windfarms but what that “wee bauchle” of a First Minister is doing to it. I could never go back, as bad as Australia is rapidly becoming.
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After watching Peta Credlin last night explaining what is behind the voice referendum politics, and as I think most of us understood but not in detail, is the Aboriginal activist written Uluru Statement (“from the heart”). In short, Labor plans to change the Constitution without explanation, just vote yes and trust them. Noting that Albo has referred to our Constitution as “archaic” and during his victory speech in May 2022 he said Labor would implement the Uluru Statement in full. The second voice to Parliament is only one of a long list of demands that include: A treaty between fellow Australians and 3.7% of the population claiming Aboriginal ancestry, even in part, sovereignty returned because it was never ceded according to the activists, for their land that always was, always will be, effectively that the majority would be permitted to continue to live on this country but in return pay taxes on wages, property and other “compensation” to our landlords. And more demands.
I remember these demands spanning back to the 1960-1970 period when the authors of Uluru Statement were university student activists, later in the 1980-1990 period they resurfaced with the same list of demands when Native Title (Mabo) legislation was being discussed and then legislated resulting in now over 30 Aboriginal Land Councils managing around half of the total land mass of Australia.
Voices to parliaments are now being discussed by State Governments, noting States have primary responsibility for Aboriginal Affairs and were before Federation the British Colonies. But States intend to legislate for a second voice to parliament. Federal Labor ignores the 1967 Referendum based changes to the Constitution that enabled them to establish Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islanders Commission 1980s, abolished 1990s after proving to be a very expensive failure and this was supported by the Labor Opposition.
So be wary people, the Uluru Statement of demands would if implemented completely change our nation and the rights of citizens but with a race based minority in charge.
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Dennis, we’re all doing it in the West, under the direction of the UN. NZ has handed over ownership of all water resources and infrastructure to the Maori elites, they have been given billions of dollars in ratepayer & taxpayer assets to play with. All city water, all lakes, all rivers, and the rain, you will not drink without paying some Maori somewhere.
They were given the fisheries industry years ago, and rapidly found out the unemployed Maoris didn’t want to be fishermen, so its all run at arms length as landlords.
They are being given the coastline, they will close beaches at will and charge for access if they want. They have already been given National Parks and are running them into the dirt as fast as they can.
You only have to look at any African country that was handed back to see our future.
Its all part of the suicide of Western culture, I don’t know why its happening, but I now it is!
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UN Indigenous Peoples agenda, add the UN Lima Protocol 1975 to gradually allow transfer of manufacturing industry to UN “developing nations”, Agenda 21 – Sustainability and long list, redistribution of the wealth of UN “developed nations” to “developing nations” and many other examples.
However, somehow this voice fraud in Australia must be exposed along with Uluru Statement to hopefully make voters think before agreeing to a not disclosed agenda details to change the Constitution.
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Quick! Someone knit a giant kilt to cover up the devastation!
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That’s a pretty good view. Plenty of damage.
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It’s well known by skeptics that wind turbines are both generators and big electric motors , the latter used when wind is non existent and or when there’s big wind and the blades freeze because the brakes are on . Wind power is an ancient tech and no solution to anything except those who make and sell them to green left radicals who are in a position of power .
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The 4,000L of oil leakage was not from the diesel generators. It is from the daily operations of the wind turbines. The Daily Record article states:
“Over 4000 litres of oil leaked from hydraulic units on turbines and sprayed over the countryside.”
This has always been a known consequence of ALL wind turbines.
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Perfect for environment offshore.
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We really are barking mad if we accept that this sort of lunacy is okay and in Australia they want to build these disasters along our east coastline.
Never forget that the weight of up to 35 average cars are swinging in the wind with every large blade.
Imagine the shorter life of these TOXIC UNRELIABLE monstrosities and the problems of maintenance for the engineers etc who will have to regularly work in terrible conditions.
How have we degenerated to this level and why have we got a loony like Bowen in charge of our energy generation in 2023?
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I imagine how they would survive a 50 calibre slug.
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My point here is that in the event of war or even an insurgency it would be so easy to disrupt the power supply. Power stations are big targets but they are point targets so can be defended reasonably easily but a wind farm , and in particular the miles of transmission lines are much harder to protect. Imagine the resources in man power to patrol Bowens 10000 km of new transmission lines. Queensland has power lines everywhere now, some duplicated, to connect it’s very dispersed wind and solar farms. A disaster in the making.
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So true, Lawrie. One little rocket, or one of those smart artillery shells, and down come just ONE tower (pulling the transm. lines with it). And that would be the end of THAT ‘wind farm’, for a quite long time – especially under war conditions.
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Neville:
Do you seriously think that the Teals would support wind turbines spoiling the view from their mansions or beach-side ‘holliday homes’?
And where do many “believers in AGW” *** actually live?
As for your query about BowandArrow I don’t know except that every party has one (e.g. Mad Matt in NSW) and they are shoved into portfolios that no-one else wants nor thinks desirable. There they can damage the party’s chances of re-ellection until the rest suddenly realise the damage they are causing.
*** AGW = Any Green Waffle
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NSW Freight Rail at one time suffered a costly spate of failures of new traction motors for their 80-class diesel electric locomotives.
The locomotive delivery contract has provision for 50 spare motors, which were placed in storage until needed. They weren’t needed for the first decade of operation. Unfortunately, when each of these machines were installed, it promptly suffered catastrophic failure.
The main bearings were interference fit, and needed to be regularly rotated into different positions to prevent bearing and shaft failure. All 50 motors required a costly overhaul.
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I didn’t know that. They used to operate through our place hauling coal, four in tandem pulling 88 wagons.
There was a passing loop by our house, where all the trains stopped and started again. They were remarkably quiet, as they had to start off gently so as to not spin the wheels which would damage the rails, but those 4 loco trains still got up a low beat which made the windows and the crockery on the shelf rattle.
When I was a kid the war stories were new and I read them. I knew that in the four engined aircraft they had to take particular care to exactly synchronise the engines to prevent what they called “bomber beat”, a low frequency high intensity beat. I wondered if this beat with the trains might have been “bomber beat”.
WE were travelling at night between Newcastle and Sydney and an old lady from Waratah rang the talkback radio complaining that the coal trains were rattling the tiles off her bathroom walls.
I thought: The authorities won’t believe her because they know that the bigger trains are quieter. But I knew that her problem was real.
So I wrote to our local member of parliament, who had been an airman during the war, thinking he will know what I am talking about.
It stopped happening.
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Those pesky Scots. First a row about men who think they are women. Now this. They clearly have problems with equipment standing upright.
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Funny! But true.
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In the old days come Saturday night many Scots had problems standing upright.
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On the plus side, support for Jimmy Krankie and her plan for independence have taken a hit following the man/woman/penis saga. In her deranged mind she thought bringing in legislation Westminster would overrule would enrage the people.
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Headstone in Glasgow cemetery. “Here lies Donald Campbell. A scholar, warrior and honest man.”
American tourist walking by – “Typical penny pinching Scots. Four people in a single grave.”
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And that’s how copper wire was discovered, two Scots fighting over a penny.
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Now, now, on any other site but this that would be deemed racist!
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Did I get my wires crossed?
wink.
20
Penny for your thoughts!
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That’s a bit of s stretch !
00
Scotland The Brave – 1820s
Scotland The Stupid – 2020s
20
And the windmill and solar capital of Australia, Adelaide, the Government has built their own diesel farm to make sure the government can keep going when the power goes out as expected. Public service hypocrisy.
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And I assume we are doing this to save China which now has more CO2 output than all other countries combined?
Shouldn’t we ask for free Chinese windmills and solar panels so we can save them?
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The Chinese might start charging us for increasing our crop production with their CO2. Imagine if that sort of news was allowed.
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And all this massive expense in the trillions is to reduce planet destroying CO2.
So what effect has it had? None at all.
But keep spending. With more windmills we can increase zero by large factors.
And the benefit to the country a huge loss, but in a good cause. Exactly what is not explained.
Like Nett Zero which has no known benefit or the Voice which is as much use as the previous national “Sorry”.
And no one bothers to explain how these things are going to benefit anyone.
Why do politicians not have to make sense at all?
Soon we can stop selling boomerangs and kangaroo scrotums to tourists and give them little Chinese windmills
which symbolize our National dedication to a completely inexplicable religious activity, installing windmills to reduce CO2 when
we know it makes no difference.
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TdeF writes this:
And therein lies the problem.
I was in another shopping mall recently, other than the one I usually shop at.
I was looking in the window of the bottle-o to see if they had a bottle of the Gin I like, Gordon’s London Dry Gin. Behind me a little way there were four of them, and they were in loud and animated discussion about climate change and how renewables were going to save the day. Oddly, they were all on the same side, just one of them arguing that more was needed than was already being done. I turned around to listen a little more closely (oh, fatal error Tony) just as one of them mentioned seven trillion dollars. I opened my mouth in awe at this, and seeing it, the one who mentioned it asked if I knew that.
My response was ….. seven trillion dollars. Are you really aware of how much that is?
Oh yes, it’s what we need to spend to get it all done.
So, I slowly responded ….. So, the Monday Lotto Jackpot is one million dollars, right.
Yep.
So seven trillion dollars means winning that Monday night jackpot every single Monday for 135,000 years.
He looked at his ‘friends’, shook his head and said Huh!, almost as a laugh, and as I walked away, I heard him say, see, there’s no point talking to the public about it, they have no idea.
And all I wanted was a box of Dilmah Earl Grey tea bags. My local Woolies doesn’t sell them.
The numbers just rolllllll meaninglessly off the tongue, you know, like lebenty seben twelveteen.
Tony.
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Tony, Its like our local “push” for micro grids, every community needs its own micro grid as a way to avoid black outs if inclement weather or other disasters befall our area.
It is impossible to convince people that a local “micro grid and battery backup” will offer no power security what so ever. The talk of batteries never mentions either how big the “battery”will need to be, or how long they will provide any community with power. There is no mention of the fact that “power supply” is generally not the issue following a blackout event, its the bloody distribution. So micro grid and battery, fully charged, fire, wind, flood or vehicle accident takes out one pole and bingo, all the power you need and absolutely no way to get it. Madness!
“
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When I was much younger some 70 years ago we had a micro grid in Muswellbrook run by the local coal company. They mined the coal, burnt it in their own power station and also made coal gas which was piped around town. The company even built the transmission lines to neighbouring towns. These days local government areas could have their own power plants, either coal or small nukes creating real competition in the market place. The worst thing we ever did was create a national grid because there is no competition and no need for companies to produce cheap, reliable energy.
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Yes Lawrie no problems with a micro /local grid when it is powered 24 hours a day by conventional means. The proposed “new micro grids” are all to be powered by, you know, what do they call it, “renewables”. Its being flogged as a way for households to contribute power from their rooftop solar into a battery with surplus being sold “back” into the main grid and thereby households will “get a saving”. Of course when the sun don’t shine the battery will go flat fairly quickly then of course the consumers will have to buy power from the big wires in the sky.
50
Tony – the stupids roam the book store chains also. Was walking through a book store to get to the computer section with two 20somethings in front of me. There was a large display of a new release fiction book and I over heard the following:
She “Oh look [author] has a new book out”
He “Yeah, that’s the one I bought you last week”
She “What [pause] is that the book I’m reading now?”.
Yes they vote, drive cars and drop babies.
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And PM Albanese is going to lower electricity costs not by removing the thieving hidden carbon tax but by forcing coal companies to reserve cheaper coal for Australians while selling even more coal to China so they can make more windmills for us to buy. You know it makes sense. How else are we going to reduce CO2?
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It’s not just the reliance on wind power that’s a national security risk but the individuals and organizations pushing this dangerous narrative who are the real national security risks.
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Minor correction Jo, apparently from the article it wasn’t “diesel generators which also leaked some 4,000L of diesel”. It was 4,000L of lubricating oil leaking from the wind turbines themselves. Not really any better from an environmental or economic standpoint, just a different leak 🙂
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Scottish windpower curtailment and the cost thereof dominates the UK picture.
https://www.drax.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Figure_10_-_GB_wind_curtailment_costs.jpg
https://www.drax.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Figure_2_-_wind_curtailment_volumes.jpg
Of course the ‘solution’ is interconnectors and/or storage, at a cost of more £billions.
30
a bit OT.. but Tony Abbott Joins the London Based Global Warming Policy Foundation
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/02/07/former-aussie-pm-tony-abbott-joins-the-climate-skeptic-gwpf/
I wish he had been stronger on the issue when he was PM.. but he barely got a chance, given the diversionary noise created by far-left.
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Too right! he wimped so much in his time as PM with so much political capital , it will take a bit of convincing. Too wet for me.
00
Consider the short, expensive, useless life of solar and wind plant then compare it with proper power generation.
Examples:
Kembs hydro plant on Grand Canal d’Alsace, France waa built in 1932. Its turbines are SCHEDULED for replacement every 60 years. Unavoidable due to cavitation erosion. They have been replaced once and won’t need replacing for another 30 years.
The Turkey Point Nuclear Power Plant at Biscayne Bay in Florida has been relicensed so that by the end of the license it will be 80 years old and might even get another extension then.
Here is a 2007 list of the oldest coal plant still running in the US as of 2007.
https://www.gem.wiki/Oldest_existing_coal_plants
The oldest at that time was 69 years old.
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The most appropriate word to describe ultra short term windmills and solar panels is renewables. Replaceables is second. It will be a common description as they fail and people realise the cost of removal is incredible.
The same thing happened with the Easter Island statues, monuments to pointless human achievement. The people have long gone and the idols remain in mute testimony to a complete and massive waste of time and resources. It would be ironic and not surprising if their construction was the reason the people perished.
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Update, the oldest operating coal plant in the US is still operating and even older than suggested in the above list.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_K._Generating_Station#%3A%7E%3Atext%3DGenerating_Station_is_a_small%2CKentucky_Avenue_and_West_Street.?wprov=sfla1
Status Operational
Commission date
Unit 4: January 1925
Unit 6: July 1938
60
Rain water is free. But catching it and storing it and building turbines to generate electricity and distributing it costs $$$.
Same story with wind. Made worse by the lack of scale. Sticking a 5MW turbine on top of a remote tall tower and only delivering 1.5 MW on average, randomly varying from 0-3 MW, and then running power cords across the countryside (or under the sea) costs $$$.
Now compare that with the scale of Liddell, to be closed in April, where one coal-fired steam turbine can deliver 320 MW 24X7.
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I disagree Robber, I see hydro power as legitimate and competitive with coal, gas and nuclear.
It is inexpensive and reliable (when designed and managed properly with no excessive discharge) and provides irrigation and drinking water, recreational lakes, places for fish to live etc..
I always include real hydro power in the list of legitimate power sources like coal, gas and nuclear.
Snowy Hydro is different, it is not a net generator but a consumer of power and is only a Big Battery, and a Turnbull/Green political fantasy. It gives properly designed hydro power and the Snowy Hydro Scheme a bad name.
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That is, SNOWY HYDRO 2, the Big Battery, not Snowy Hydro itself that I am saying is bad. Somehow the “2” got dropped.
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I realised what you meant David.
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On the other hand hydro destroys river ecology and has sent unique and rare species to the brink and actually extinct. It’s a disaster in China especially.
Can be unreliable too, which is especially problematic if you use it for a high proportion of electricity, like Norway, where drought has caused problems. And that has a knock on effect for the UK as we have an interconnector, which ran flat out and saved us this winter.
30
It’s a disaster in China especially.
However a positive for the West. Yangtze River has two dams and some 250million people live along or near it. Every time the Chinese get belligerent with regard to Taiwan, South China Sea or balloons a copy of the book “The Dam Busters Raid” should be ordered through Amazon for Xi Jinping.
As point 4 of the Travel China Guide (first link) says:
“Conventional weapons cannot do anything to Three Gorges Dam, unless the nuclear weapon were used.”
20
Isn’t interesting that Leftists talk about “sustainability” (sic) but all they have to offer for energy is random, hugely expensive, mostly not-recyclable, resource-intensive and environmentally damaging but rational thinkers offer compact, inexpensive, reliable, extremely long life electricity generators.
Who’s “unsustainable” then?
130
As Chris Bowen knows the water analogy is a good one. People brag about solar and “not getting a power bill” and I wonder how selective they are about how they look at costs. I could say I never get water rates…but….many thousands on tanks, many thousands on pumps , filters, plumbing, then the ongoing management, maintenance and repairs and replacements is all mine. But I dont pay water rates (big deal) Waste water is a whole other extravaganza now septic tanks arent “allowed” anymore, just more of the same cost wise.
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Apparently a Ghost that looked very much like former Labor PM Bob Hawke was sighted near the Hotel Resort at Terrigal, NSW, a favourite Labor conference venue, shaking his head slowly and muttering: “Whitlam, Rudd, Gillard and now Albanese”.
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Exactly so Yarpos. Our ‘free’ water is far from free when looking at the cost of the infrastructure and maintainance of it.
The same goes for one of our farm dams, after wombat damage followed by the very heavy rains last year. The chap who was scheduled to repair the original damage a year ago was unable to, thanks to the shortage of workers, thanks to ‘you know what’ and ‘you know who’. He is still very busy on major work after the floods. Who knows when our main dam will be repaired?
‘Free’? Ha ha!
20
Onshore wind power is one of the cheapest sources of electricity there is. To argue otherwise is tilting at windmills and ultimately quixotic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
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Ask a cost accountant to account for all the costs including transmission lines and “firming” back up equipment, and removal and replacement every on average twenty years, and maintenance costs offshore as well.
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Ogden Nash:
The door of a bigoted mind opens outwards, so that the pressure of facts upon it is to close it more snugly.
Simon has a very snug mind.
60
Clueless to be true and kind to him. Obviously he has an education, but not as WE know it.
00
Tell the man if the wind turbines are inactive that they’re not producing power. Ideaology rules reason in this case
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Yes, it’s not bad when you get paid twice for the same random thing which retailers are forced to buy and at the same time make conventional power twice the price with the compulsory purchase of LGCs. Plus 100% tax depreciation on what was bought with public money, so it is just mountains of cash tax free. Why do you think people (not governments) build windmills? Because it’s a licence to print money.
The hidden carbon tax in coal/gas electricity prices is simple governmnet legislated theft run by the Clean Energy Regulator which administers the scam and punishes companies who do not buy their carbon indulgences. As for ‘dirty’ the photos of dirty air are pictures of steam from cooling towers, not any form of pollution unless the stuff everyone is breathing out now is pollution.
CO2 is a harmless invisible gas from which ALL life on earth is made. Now it is Dirty and punished by the Clean Energy Regulator. It’s quite unbelievable that the gas of life for carbon lifeforms on earth is now officially treated as evil pollution.
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And why are electricity price skyrocketing and coal power stations closing if Green energy is cheap? It is all by the design of the hidden carbon tax which punishes steady base load power by preferring lunch time solar and random wind energy. The whole system is setup to fail by design, leaving us a third world country. Now what’s that about cheaper? Where?
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If the winds blew at a constant speed, we would have reliability and productive capacity, but a lot of the time wind farms are underutilised scrap.
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Simon, I’ll loan you a shovel to start your wind farm, and see if you ever get the energy back that you will have to put in. You will be burning coal to go all the way from ore to wire to machinery to wind farm, and it will be a net loss in the end.
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Simon
I can have a very cheap car sitting in the driveway. But if I don’t know if it will run when I need it, then because I need a car I will need to have another car which I can rely on, sitting in the driveway as well. Not so cheap now…
This is exactly the madness of the intermittent “cheap” renewables.
We have no idea, literally, whether we will have wind power at any time or date in the future. So we have to have something reliable (read nuclear, coal, gas) to back it up. And somebody had to pay for that to sit there and potentially completely cover the wind turbine.
If you cannot see the utter stupidity of this situation then I cannot help you.
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I also have a car in my driveway. It has a 58 KWh battery in it. I don’t care when the electricity is generated for the battery, I only charge off-peak.
Ditto for passive heated houses. It doesn’t matter what time of the day electricity is generated.
Modern, large scale industrial users also have considerable choice on when they require energy. Inflexible energy users pay the spot rate and that’s fine, it’s their choice.
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“It doesn’t matter what time of the day electricity is generated.”
You are fooling yourself, YET AGAIN….
If you use power from the grid, you are relying totally on coal fired power.
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“I also have a car in my driveway.”
Great place to leave it….. permanently.
When you actually want to go anywhere… just call a taxi.. right 😉
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All in the name of equity, diversity and tolerance. Get it!
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The problem with electric cars Simon, is that they run on coal. In terms of CO2 emissions, assuming they were a problem, they are no different to petrol/gasoline or diesel vehicles. The only difference is whether CO2 (what you call “carbon” (sic)) comes out of the tailpipe or at the power station.
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Yes Simon, so who pays for the enormous batteries, worth trillions, that are necessary to back up the grid for days due to those often long periods of poor sun and no wind? Or is every household going to have to provide its own large battery to cover several days worth of usage of vehicles and in the house. What if its cold or hot and large amts of power are needed. And we have not even looked at industrial and commercial users who are 70% of useage.
This is sounding more and more like PNG by the minute. There the factory I ran had its own generators which kicked in regularly to cover for frequent grid issues.
We have this mentality that “someone else” will take care of it. And that someone else must be paid and make a profit. Pity those who are poor and cannot afford to cough up for batteries or pay eye watering power bills.
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If that were really true Simon, it wouldn’t be the case that the more windmills we get, the more expensive electricity becomes, would it?
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It’s not a lie, just deceit. You have to multiply the wind power cost x4 because they only work 1/4 of the time.
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Wind and water make sense if you have an infinite steady resource. That is not the case. The wind is random and the water runs out, which is why they have to pump it back up the hill, which raises a few questions about the logic. At least hydro is ‘commandable’. Wind and solar are not commandable. And one of them is guaranteed unavailable for half the day. Almost all requirement for power are for steady power on command. You cannot run a society on random power.
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Simon >”Onshore wind power is one of the cheapest sources of electricity there is. To argue otherwise is tilting at windmills and ultimately quixotic.”
Siemens, General Electric, and Vestas seem to be having difficulty finding the cheapness, onshore or off:
Wind power makers suffer huge losses, want to abandon major project
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/02/wind_power_makers_suffer_huge_losses_want_to_abandon_major_project.html
And,
“further government action” (i.e. increased subsidies) needed apparently. Don’t you mean Simon, that it is the taxpayer subsidies that are cheap?
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WRONG AGAIN. !.
They do not allow for the massive maintenance costs, and the costs of integration into the grid, which is considerable.
Nor do they make allowance for the cost involved in their erratic and very often NON-SUPPLY., thus the need for near 100% back-up
Nor do they consider the costs of forcing the REAL suppliers to curtain production, thus operating inefficiently.
And of course, they would not even exist without MASSIVE subsidies and mandates.
You have been fooled by leftist misinformation, yet again. !
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I dare you to minimise your electricity costs by turning off all electrical items when the wind drops below rated 10% capacity.
Use electricity ONLY when the wind is blowing.
But you know you won’t….. The height of hypocrisy..
You cannot break your total reliance on the coal fired network.
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Pretty much every single thing touted as being ‘green energy’, has led to worse environmental outcomes.
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A couple of years ago someone suggested on this site that wind turbines produce electricity at wind speeds up to 50 kph. At higher wind speeds they are shut down to minimise damage to the bearings. But wind turbines and their foundations must be built to withstand gale force wind speeds.
A couple of years ago there was an ABC program about a Tasmanian farmer who leased some land to a business to install some wind turbines. The Project Manager said the wind turbines produced electricity at wind speeds 18 kph and higher, while the average at the site was 30 kph, with gusts up to 200 kph.
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Not sure where I saw the info – but modern turbines (3 kW) certainly need at least 15 kph winds to start generating electricity. Also, that the max wind speed is 80-90 kph that the wind turbines can stand, but even before that speed, they are sometimes braked.
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Do you mean 3MW?
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I wonder how do wind turbines/solar make money for the investors? If wind and solar is so cheap to produce as the energy source is free where does the money come from to make people want to invest in it? Right now Vic and SA are both negative $37, But Vic is still using 75% Coal, how do you make money when the costs are negative? Subsidies perhaps?
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You can make money by selling on term contracts rather than relying on spot prices. For example, ACT govt claims to be 100% powered by renewables, by buying xxx GWhr from wind and solar. The ones who are hurt by negative spot prices are the big coal producers.
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Rusting, seizing, leaking oil, falling over, failing prematurely…
What would Basil think of these “faulty towers”?
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Wind Turbines—- :Revolving(when the wind blows)Ruinables?
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[…] Jo Nova reports on the latest developments in Scotland […]
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More proof ‘prayer wheels’ are not just chopping up birds but polluting our green and pleasant lands. Oh, the violence of it. That’s just about sums it up doesn’t it.
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[…] https://joannenova.com.au/2023/02/who-knew-scottish-wind-turbines-are-kept-warm-with-diesel-power/ […]
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