The current danger from climate change justifies the biggest taxpayer investment in wind and solar farms in British history, the Government will say on Thursday.
At that point it’s not the danger that is the justification it’s the profits. So, build ’em, leave them subject to market forces and make a fortune.
Not that we need the taxpayer to do that of course. But the very fact that some other justification is being used is a hint that the cheaper and cheapest claims are not true.
“I am Dale Vince and I approve of this message”.
In the early hours of yesterday morning wind power was generating less than 1% of its nameplate capacity. It was obviously dark too so solar was generating nothing. Increasing the wind and solar farms multiple times will still leave a hole so if the Government is committed to net-zero they should be talking about energy storage rather more than increasing intermittent generating capacity. The problem is that storage is very very expensive compared with the gas powered plants needed to keep the lights on. Even when we do have lots of expensive storage we still need to pay to build and maintain gas plants for that rare weather event when generation is near zero and storage is depleted. It’s not as if we can’t anticipate those rare “once in a lifetime” weather events happening. Those climate “scientists” keep telling us that rare weather events are going to happen more and more.
The joy is that whether the renewables are cheaper or more expensive a government investment in them is guaranteed to be a bad investment.
Precisely because they are either cheaper or more expensive.
How many times does it have to be said?
The “economics” of unusables is whatever can be invented and data fabricated to fit.
These things simply cannot provide dependable, usable power, and until some workable means of storage (hydro excluded as that has been proven for well over a century) is found – don’t hold your breath – windmills and solar panels simply represent waste that make HS2 look like something norbert colon (viz reference) would be happy to put his money into.
The best store of energy that can be turned into reliable power is fuel – fossil or nuclear.
Thank you Mark!!
Go back to your constituencies, and prepare for power cuts.
The current danger from Climate Change as predicted by people who have been consistently wrong for forty years and counting. Why do we still believe them when they have been crying wolf for decades?
Why do we still believe them
Manufactured consent.
“Leave them subject to market forces and make a fortune”
Any attempt to reduce or withdraw the subsidies (ROC’s, FIT’s, constraint payments, etc) which prop up unreliables, leads to howls of protest from those sectors! The UK government recently offered new contracts at around £45/MWH, (which fossil fuels can profitably operate at), and received precisely ZERO bids. The price had to be nearly doubled before any interest was shown. If market forces REALLY applied the country wouldn’t be covered by wind farms, solar panels, BioGas plants, and the threat of hundreds of miles of new HV power lines. And the ultimate absurdity of the latter is that they have to be sized for the maximum output of the various sites, yet rarely carry even half that load…
@Stoneyground
Climate “scientists” should watch this Richard Feynman lecture on the scientific method:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYPapE-3FRw
They should watch all 10 minutes of it though the first minute is sufficient.
Putting it into real numbers, £45/MWH is 4.5p per kWhr, or “unit”. I’m currently being billed 19.2p+VAT per kWhr.
@Boganboy
You’re welcome!
Forget all these fantastic grifts which are, essentially without exception, just powerpoint voodoo. The ONLY means of “storing” excess electricity which is even vaguely practical and which might have some remote chance of providing a small fraction of what is needed is pumped hydro, but ask yourself, pumped to where?
How much might make a meaningful difference? 1GW, 2, 10?
Whatever, you obviously need to pump water uphill to some storage. What sort of head, and what sort of minimum stored volume to make it viable? (not “economic”. ANYTHING can be made “economic”)
Given that we don’t live in the Sahara, this would mean pumping water from a river up to some natural valley or whatever can be dammed practically.
If that’s the case why isn’t there a hydro plant there already?
If the site isn’t suitable for hydro – where nature does the hard work of putting the water in place – then why is it suitable for water to be pumped up there?
We have pumped storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station and it’s a decent scale to make it worthwhile (and to ensure a lot of power can come on line very quickly), but this was designed as part of the pre lunacy grid when there was a reliable source of overnight power available.
How would this work if it was disconnected from the grid and connected solely to unusables? (hint, it wouldn’t).
What is being suggested is something basically diffuse (sort of pointless then, but I suppose distance doesn’t exist in powerpoint land). Dozens, hundreds perhaps of small scale installations (a few MW each?) probably in the more mountainous areas a long way from where power is needed or where the unusables actually are (oh dear MORE miles and miles of power lines). It would be unusables X impracticals X misaligned (when the power was actually needed, would there be enough water in store in the right places?)
Forget all this shite anyway as the illusion can only be maintained by NOT trying to realise it in practice.
To maintain the unusable illusion means gas and diesel gensets. Will it ever sink in to just get rid of the unusables?
he UK government recently offered new contracts at around £45/MWH, (which fossil fuels can profitably operate at), and received precisely ZERO bids
That £45/MWH is 2011 price and used for all ‘renewables’ to make them appear cheaper than they are. All these strike prices increase by RPI Every year
Also, current gas MWH high price is due to this and prev Govt policy: import LNG rather than use UK gas