Wind Power Wannabe

Two recent stories about wind power went unremarked in the mainstream media, presumably because the stories don’t fit the dominant Green narrative, aka the Green Dream.

The first is the report out of the UK that wind farms produce far less energy and cause far more problems with the grid than proponents have predicted or acknowledged.

The John Muir Trust — a “conservation charity,” please note — commissioned an engineering study of wind power in the UK. The report is out, and it is revealing. While wind power farms are pitched to investors — really, lawmakers, since wind power only exists because of lavish subsidies from government — as generating, on average, 30% of their maximum output over time, in reality they average only 25%. So wind power delivers about one-sixth less electricity than promised. This is a very significant shortfall. Yet wind power averages less than 20% of capacity most of the time, and a risible 10% about a third of the time.

But there is a more severe problem. Because wind power is so erratic, it needs backup from fossil fuel power plants, and that backup has to be able to shut down quickly when the wind blows hard, or come online quickly when wind farms won’t deliver even their measly 25% power. So wind power farms must be tied very tightly to fossil fuel plants, or the grid will face a shortfall.

Even worse: the times (such as the middle of the night) when power demands on the grid are slight are often the periods when the wind blows hardest. At such times, owners of wind generators — who have to sell power whenever it shows up, even at a low price — push power onto the grid, thereby forcing other providers off.

This is because the grid is just a distribution network of power lines and transformers with little capacity for storing power when it isn’t being consumed. Yes, there is “pumped storage,” which uses excess electricity to get water up hill, then during periods of high demand lets it flow back down, turning turbines as it goes, thus generating power. But pumped storage is inefficient and limited. Currently, the United States, the world leader in pumped storage, can store only about 2.5% of the average electric power sent across the grid at any given time.

A second damaging piece of news for wind power is the report that it may have lost its enchantment even for the Dutch.

Perhaps because of its historic use of windmills, the Netherlands has invested heavily in modern wind power. It is now third in the world in offshore wind power generation — of course heavily subsidized by the government. But the new center-right government has decided that continuing the massive subsidies, which include the transfer of 4.5 billion Euros of Dutch tax dollars to a German engineering company to build and run new wind farms, is not, shall we say, defensible.

The new Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, may have come up with the perfect epitaph for wind power. He reputedly said, “Windmills turn on subsidies.” Soon fewer will be turning.