We have covered issues and problems associated with wind farms, which eco-artists and media minions who adhere to climate change dogma ignore.
The lack of attention to the failures associated with wind power doesn’t make them any less real. Recently, Dr. Wade Allison, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford and CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) researcher, shed some bright light on those issues.
Allison, a reliable expert on this subject, wrote a brief review of calculations and assessments associated with wind energy projects for the United Kingdom that were published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation. His conclusions were scathing.
British consumers should follow the example of Alice who, in negotiating terms with the White Queen, insisted on clarification of the day on which jam should be delivered. Evidently, they should not look to wind power for reliable energy, but elsewhere.With general energy shortages, the war in Europe, high prices and the likelihood of failures in electricity supply, many popular scientific presumptions underlying energy policy should be questioned. Wind power fails on every count.
Allison delves into the mathematics of wind energy generation, so I will hit some of the highlights. A contrast with nuclear power, a potentially viable fossil fuel option, is made in one section. Allison also focuses on how relatively delicate the wind stations are in very windy conditions.
If the wind speed is 10 metres per second (about 20 mph) the power is 600 watts per square metre at 100% efficiency. That means to deliver the same power as Hinkley Point C (3200 million watts) [nuclear power station in Somerset, England] by wind would require 5.5 million square metres of turbine swept area – that should be quite unacceptable to those who care about birds and to other environmentalists.But the performance of wind is much worse than that, as a look at the simple formula shows. Because the power carried by the wind depends on the third power of the wind speed, if the wind drops to half speed, the power available drops by a factor of 8. Almost worse, if the wind speed doubles, the power delivered goes up 8 times, and as a result the turbine has to be turned off for its own protection. This is not related to the technology of the turbine, which can harvest no more.
His observations are borne out by news reports. Last year, Scotland cut down 14 million trees to make room for wind turbines.
Scotland, site of the recent United Nations 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) climate summit, has cut down 14 million trees to make room for new wind power installations.As reported in The Herald, the tree removal was for 21 wind turbine projects.“The Scottish Government has moved to reassure that more trees have been planted, but it is unknown what proportion of these are mature plants that play a bigger role in turning carbon into oxygen.
Late last year, strong winds damaged wind turbines at the Lucelo wind farm in Spain.
The wind turbines of these wind farms represent the first generation of large wind production facilities built in the province of León, Spain, where the turbine manufacturer was the then Spanish company Ecotecnia, which was later acquired by Alstom Wind and in 2015 by GE – General Electric.It was the first time, as far as we know, that a wind turbine has crashed in Lyon County.This area is currently experiencing a new wind boom, with many orders for new wind power facilities scattered across the county, with some of these license applications near where this incident now occurred.
Also, in 2022, a wind turbine in Sweden collapsed…leaking up to 200 gallons of oil.
Allison also explores how unreliable winds can be and the challenges associated with wind farm battery storage capabilities.
…The wind blows somewhat more steadily offshore than onshore, as every sailor knows. Nevertheless, the unreliability inherent in ind energy persists….The green rectangle (added) illustrates that 8.8 GW was not available for this time, presumably because the average wind speed halved. That much energy, 1600 GWh, is 1000 times the capacity of the world’s largest grid storage battery (1.6 GWh at Moss Landings, California).Battery technology has its own problems. It can provide for laptops and other portable applications, even car batteries at up to 75 kWh, but larger batteries have problems with safety and mineral shortages.Batteries 20 million times larger are never going to be available and storage batteries will never make good the failure of offshore wind farms, even for a week. And the wind can drop for longer periods than that.
When planning to support electrical energy grids, every energy-producing option should be on the table. Scientifically valid assessments like Allison’s must be considered: Wind energy is not a universal energy solution, and thrusting it into places it does not belong (e.g., marine mammal habitats and bald eagle territories) is truly environmentally destructive.
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