Image: Wind Energy – free, clean energy from the …
By Paul Homewood – NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
Today’s offering from the dumbed down Telegraph is from silly little girl called Lucy Mangan:
I’m on holiday in Norfolk at the moment, and was standing on the beach with a friend looking out to sea at the majestic crop of wind turbines on the horizon. He made a noise of disgust and delivered a small rant about giving in to eco warriors. I was reminded why I only see him once every very many holidays.
Because of all the things I don’t understand about enviro-sceptics (and I am not wholly unsympathetic, believing as I do that as with everything else under this – increasingly carcinogenic – sun, there is always at least un peu d’exaggeration on every side) it is the objection to getting stuff for free. Which is, essentially, what renewable energy is. The sea’s there. The sun’s there. The wind’s there. You build some stuff to capture it and – it’s yours. Forever. It just keeps coming.
You don’t have to keep digging it out of the ground, ferrying it about, or finding somewhere to keep your radioactive isotopes. How can you object to this? It’s so clever, so neat, so satisfying. And if you hate nature, you can easily think of it as getting one over on the bugger. Am I missing a step? Or are they?
She is probably referring to Sheringham Shoal wind farm, just off the Norfolk coast. Perhaps she ought to read my post on that wind farm from two years ago:
Dave sent me this piece from the EDP, although he has not found it on line yet. It relates to the Sheringham Shoal wind farm, and gives a useful insight into the offshore market.
Sheringham is owned by Scira Offshore Energy, and is the latter’s sole activity, according to Scira’s Annual Accounts.
Scira is in turn owned by Statoil (40%), Statkraft (40%) and the Green Investment Bank (20%).
The following information can be gleaned from the Accounts, available here.
1) Revenue for 2015 was £140.0 million, and is split:
In other words, more than two thirds of income comes from ROC’s.
The Accounts also state that production last year was 1.17 TWh, so we can calculate unit revenue at £34.71/MWh for sales of power, and £83.90/MWh for the ROC’s, which is the subsidy element eventually passed on to consumers.
2) Profit after tax was £18.9 million, on equity of £447 million, giving a return on capital of 4.2%. However, there are also shareholder loans of £450 million outstanding, on which interest is paid.
It is therefore more sensible to look at profit before interest, which was £52.0 million. As the original capital cost amounted to £1366 million, the overall return last year, including interest, was 3.8%.
Whether they can maintain this level of profit is debatable. Although they say prevailing windspeeds were lower last year, capacity utilisation was up at 42%.
There is also the fact that they are now paying the Climate Change Levy. This could knock another £3 million off profits.
What all of this shows is that offshore wind is still an inherently expensive way of producing electricity.
Ref.: https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2018/08/18/wind-power-is-free-says-silly-little-telegraph-reporter/
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President Trump Mocks Subsidised Wind Energy
By Eric Worrall
h/t Breitbart – “That’s the end of that windmill” – a video clip of President Trump mocking wind power, criticising the ongoing green mass murder of birds, and miming shooting a wind turbine at a New York Fundraiser.
Why Windmills are the Worst — by @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/t5WqMu9hSe
— Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) August 13, 2018
History will not judge kindly all the greens who stood by while birds were slaughtered in the name of saving the environment.
One of my first lessons while learning to fly was that eagles and other large raptors don’t get out of the way. Millions of years of evolution has taught eagles especially that they are the lords of the sky, that nothing can challenge them when they are in the air. Its not that the eagles can’t see the turbine blades, they simply cannot grasp that the lump of metal or fibreglass whooshing towards them poses any kind of threat.
As a pilot I can evade large birds. But wind turbines are static, they have no capacity to avoid a collision.
As long as wind turbines are being built, the slaughter of endangered large birds of prey will continue.
