Wind Power – The Saltbush Club

The Great Wind and Solar Land Grab

By Steve Goreham

US Fish and Wildlife Service. Public Domain

Which is more environmentally friendly — an energy source that uses one unit of land to produce one unit of electricity, or a source that uses 100 units of land to produce one unit of electricity?

The answer should be obvious.

Nevertheless, “green” energy advocates call for a huge expansion of wind, solar and other renewables that use vast amounts of land to replace traditional power plants that use comparatively small amounts of land.

Vaclav Smil, professor emeritus at the University of Manitoba in Canada, extensively analyzed the power density of alternative sources used to generate electricity. He defined power density as the average flow of electricity generated per square meter of horizontal surface (land or sea area).

Continue reading: https://www.westernjournal.com/op-ed-one-simple-energy-question-devastates-net-zero-pipe-dreams/

Gas Power Saves Texas From Blackouts, As Wind Power Collapses Again!

By Paul Homewood

From: https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2022/12/26/gas-power-saves-texas-from-blackouts-as-wind-power-collapses-again/

Over the weekend the US declared a Grid Emergency in Texas, as temperatures plummeted.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/us-declares-texas-grid-emergency-180011531.html

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/texas-power-prices-spike-more-165419011.html

The emergency order from the US Energy Department allowed the state’s grid operator to exceed certain air pollution limits to boost generation amid record power demand in the state. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, whose service area includes 90% of electric customers in Texas, requested the emergency order Friday, warning it may need to resort to blackouts. TRANSLATION – fire up more coal and gas plants! Continue reading “Gas Power Saves Texas From Blackouts, As Wind Power Collapses Again!”

The Biggest Public Policy Disaster in a Lifetime

By Ian Plimer

The 27th COP event is preceded by breathtakingly shrill predictions of forthcoming disasters from speculated catastrophic climate change. Here are a few cold hard facts:

No one has ever proven that human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming. For more than two decades I have been asking scientists for this proof. If proven, it would also have to be shown that natural carbon dioxide emissions, 97% of the annual total, don’t drive global warming. This also has never been done. Furthermore, if had been proven that human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming, there would be endless citation of the dozen or so seminal scientific papers demonstrating this proof. Instead, there is obfuscation and deafening silence.
Continue reading at Quadrant: https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2022/11/the-biggest-public-policy-disaster-in-a-lifetime/

Poisoning people to save the planet

By Ian Plimer. First published at The Spectator Australia: https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/australian-notes-322/

The blades from environmentally friendly subsidised bird- and bat-chomping inefficient wind turbines have a short life and cannot be recycled. They weigh 10-20 tonnes, are 40-60 metres long, need to be replaced every 15 years or less and are composed of plastic, fibreglass, balsa wood and resins. Balsa wood is produced by chopping down Brazilian rainforests, in an environmentally friendly way of course. Fibreglass is impregnated with epoxy resins to increase blade strength and are made from petroleum. Previously blades were disposed of in Third World countries for a pittance until these countries ungraciously decided not to be the dumping ground for First World toxic rubbish. The wind industry was miffed and took to dumping used blades illegally until communities objected. Continue reading “Poisoning people to save the planet”

An Overview of the Capital Costs of Firming Wind Farms with Pumped Hydro

By Michael Bowden; IEng(Electronics-UK);CPL;CQP and Craig Brooking; MBA; BE(Civil); FAIC, Dip; formerly FIEAust; CPEng.

The Conclusions:

Over the next 15 years, NSW will decommission four of its five coal fired power stations which will dramatically reduce the availability of reliable and dispatchable electrical power.

According to the NSW Government, the reduced capacity will be replaced by wind and solar farms firmed with batteries, gas and pumped hydro. This paper has demonstrated that renewables firmed by pumped hydro is massively expensive and high-risk commercially and technically. The most cost-effective and technically feasible solution is to replace the four decommissioned coal fired power stations with modern HELE USC coal plants which would deliver significant advantages over the firmed renewables strategy.

Read the whole paper: https://saltbushclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/costs-of-firming-wind-with-hydro.pdf [PDF, 270 kB]

Intermittent Energy – Wind and Solar

By Richard Blayden

Although much lauded as the future “clean” power generation, wind and solar present serious problems in their unavoidable variation in performance on every time scale.

The extent of that constant variation is hidden neatly (and deeper and deeper) as time-series data are summated into weekly/monthly/annual power generation reports.

Hidden or not, that variation is a serious problem and a major source of inflated costs as more and more “renewables” are added to the grid.

The reality of that variation is glaringly obvious in the base data recorded in the NEM web-site. That source provides a detailed list of every power generation facility connected to the grid together with maps showing precise location and hour by hour performance details over the last few operating days for each and every facility.

The data for solar, wind and battery power is summarised in the link below (click the image to read the full PDF document) and appears to show admirably, the weakness of constant and largely unpredictable variability in both solar and wind power generation across all locations within Australia.

Richard Blayden – Founding Member of the Saltbush Club, Engineer, BSc Hons – Engineering/Thermodynamics (UK) and avid blogger in on-line climate discussion forums.

Whirling Triffids are now Invading our Seashores

By Viv Forbes

“I saw them now with a disgust that they had never roused in me before. Horrible alien things which some of us had somehow created, and which the rest of us, in our careless greed, had cultured all over the world. One could not even blame nature for them.” – Bill Masen, in “The Day of the Triffids”

Wind turbines need a huge area to generate significant electricity. An area the size of Wales would need to be covered in wind turbines just to meet one sixth of UK’s daily energy needs.
Continue reading “Whirling Triffids are now Invading our Seashores”

The Dismal Economics for Offshore Wind

By Jonathan A. Lesser
Key Manhattan Institute

Findings:

1. Offshore wind is not cost-effective, and the forecasts of rapidly declining costs through increasing economies of scale are unrealistic.

2. Absent continued subsidies—such as state mandates for offshore generation and renewable energy credits, which force electric utilities to sign long-term agreements with offshore wind developers at above-market prices—it is unlikely that any offshore wind facilities will be developed.

3. These subsidies, along with the need for additional transmission infrastructure and backup sources of electricity, will increase the cost of electricity for consumers and reduce economic growth. The actual costs of offshore wind projects borne by electric ratepayers and taxpayers are likely to be greater than advertised. Continue reading “The Dismal Economics for Offshore Wind”

Taking the Wind Out of Climate Change

Taking the Wind Out of Climate Change

The proponents of Climate Change insist that we are facing an imminent existential threat to our very existence. To prevent this catastrophe they assert that we must make immediate, impactful changes — particularly regarding our energy policies. The primary solution advocated by the major Climate Change advocates (e.g. the IPCC and the scientists comprising the so-called 97% consensus) is industrial wind energy. Continue reading “Taking the Wind Out of Climate Change”

Waiting for Wind

By Viv Forbes

Australia’s elected appeasers
Push mad energy plans, just as teasers.
But while coal powers Asians
And nukes help Caucasians
Dumb Aussies sit praying for breezes!