Sunday 11 March 2012

Wind energy - to the nearest round number

From Bishop Hill:


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

You miss major points.....windmill electricity is very expensive and needs massive subsidies for construction and operation.....windmill electricity is incompetent as a base load source.....windmills have massive maintenance and capital replacement costs over the comparable life span of a coal generation plant......

cav said...

Maybe they should paint them green.

1735099 said...

A few years ago during a visit to my wife's family at Wondecla, FNQ, her rellies proudly showed me the wind farm installation at Windy Hill near Ravenshoe.
It was commissioned in 2000, and has been quietly generating power which feeds into the state grid free from controversy since.
It operates on a working dairy farm, and the locals take it for granted and have no issues with it.
But then, they're pragmatic North Queenslanders with no axe to grind.

Rob said...

The garbled phrase in my first paragraph is iPad predictive text for "your attention"

Rob said...

I've posted this twice now and twice it's disappeared.
Boy on a bike, whilst you continue to pan renewable energy ive tried three times to bring your attention to a glaring error in your analysis of home solar power economics but each time you have ignored my comments. You quoted a price from a chinese trade site of 50,000 US for a 5kw system, then added import, installation and finance. The reality is if you look at Australian retailers that price is not even in the ballpark of reality. You said if prices were below 20,000 for 5 kw it would start to make sense. Well have a look at a few australian retailers, keeping in mind these all include delivery and installation and one includes three years interest free finance
http://www.energymatters.com.au/specials/nsw-solar-power-deals.php
4.94kw for $14,578 without rebates, $10,999 after rebates

http://www.solarpoweraustralia.com.au/grid-feed-solar-power-for-your-home.html
5.2kw for $16,390 with no rebate or $11,089 with rebates.

http://www.energybank.com.au/solar-systems.php
4.6kw system for $15,263 pre and $11,500 post.

The reality is solar power is now competitive with grid power without rebates. It only gets sweeter from here as electricity costs inevitably rise.

Most of these criticisms of wind are as easily dismissed. Many wind farms are situated on working farms like woolnorth on a working beef cattle property in NW Tasmania, requiring no forest clearing. Bird and bat deaths are largely an issue of very early wind farms when positioning issues were less well understood, modern well positioned wind farms kill significantly fewer birds than high rise buildings each year. Wind like all intermittents do require strategies to deal with fluctuating output but the speed wind increases and decreases mean it can be backed up by natural gas turbines on standby using no fuel until powered up, or in many places including new south Wales and Tasmania they are backed up by rapidly despatchable hydro power. The points about every green job leading to three job losses and green energy causing deaths through fuel poverty are so ludicrous and alarmist they hardly deserve a response.