PC and pro-wind blowhards apparenrly hate the environment
Instead here we see them cheering for the cluttering up of the environment with the huge windmill arrays they defend with fact avoiding arguments. Without tax subsidies and legal mandates to impose these impractical monstrosities they would never get built. PC simply skips over the unreliable and grid damaging record of wind.

For the sake of balance, wind turbines briefly produced more than 20% of our electricity generation this morning. It's the first time I've ever seen that. Mind you, demand from the interconnector is also high (6.3% not long ago), and these swings must be a nightmare for the grid.

But, for the sake of being fair, I've just seen wind turbines generating 20% of our electricity needs, and am reporting the fact.

Golf Charlie at 12:14

IPPR have a long involvement in this area, they produced a guide to selling the message back in 2006. This page outlines and there is a link to download the document. While looking for a working link also came across a follow up document Warm Words II.

While looking for a working link I also came across a follow up document Warm Words II.

Mick.

Golf Charlie at 12:14

Links did not format correctly, should have previewed. :(

IPPR have a long involvement in this area, they produced a guide to selling the message back in 2006. This page outlines and there is a link to download the document.

http://www.ippr.org/publications/warm-wordshow-are-we-telling-the-climate-story-and-can-we-tell-it-better

While looking for a working link also came across a follow up document Warm Words II.

http://www.ippr.org/files/images/media/files/publication/2011/05/warmwords_web_1596.pdf

Mick.

Mick J from the link, this:

"To help answer those questions, ippr commissioned Linguistic Landscapes to analyse current UK constructions and conceptions of climate change in the public domain, using some of the tools and principles of discourse analysis and semiotics.

This report was commissioned by the ippr as part of our project on how to stimulate climate-friendly behaviour in the UK."

I find it interesting to note that "discoure analysis and semiotics" are required to "stimulate climate-friendly behaviour in the UK". This presumably because simple maths doesn't produce the required answers.

Mark Hodgson, I am not anti wind power. When wind was generating 20% of electricity that is impressive if correct. Clearly if we had 5 X as many wind turbines, they could have produced 100%. But we would still need 100+% of fossil fuels to cope when the wind is not blowing optimally for almost 100% of the time.

The French interconnector is almost all French nuclear. So does windpower reduce CO2? No! Unless Nuclear is there to back it all up at the flick of a switch.

These assertions of 20% are a bit iffy - rather like saying a child on a trampoline is 12 foot above ground level - Yes but only for a moment.

Start here; http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/download.php
Download the Demand and Wind columns. (data is every 5 minutes).
Load into a spreadsheet, calculate wind as percentage of demand.
Create a graph of the percentage that is wind.

All it really tells you is that we have some very flexible and responsive back-up generators - which must have been kept turning "on idle" (and burning fuel).

Believe me,I'm not in favour of wind turbines! As someone who regards himself as an old-fashioned environmentalist (as opposed to the new kind who obsess about CO2 but are happy to destroy our beautiful visual environment thanks to their obsession), I regard them as very bad news. They might be a price worth paying if they did their job, but they don't, in so many ways, which is one of the reasons why I started this thread.

I just thought, having reported on their poor performance, I should also report when they're doing a bit better. At the time of writing, wind is producing 13.1% of our electricity, and we are bringing in 7.4% through the interconnector. It's a dog's breakfast.

Mark Hodgson, I have always been considered as someone who cares about the environment, which I do, and as someone who grew up with environmental issues from home, garden, family and village life.

I think at University I was told I couldn't care about the Environment, if I wasn't Veggie/Vegan/CND or whatever. That is when I also realised how much I preferred white bread to wholemeal, and that most of the Born Again Environmentalists were fairly clueless about anything to do with rural life, countryside etc.

When powercuts hit towns and cities, there is outrage. If blackouts are caused by low wind or too much wind in the UK, the population will realise what a pointless scam it has all been. As a country bumpkin, power cuts STILL happen when trees fall onto power lines or their roots rip up buried cables. Townies don't lose any sleep over such matters, as it does not effect them. Yet!

golf charlie

I confess to being born in one city and brought up in another, but I don't like big towns/cities, and have lived (by choice) in the country - in a hamlet and in a village, and now I live in a small market town. I am passionate about defending our wilderness areas against depredation. That is something all environmentalists should, in my opinion, be able to agree upon, but sadly no longer, it seems.

I am rarely happier that on the top of some remote Scottish mountain, enjoying the wilderness; and I am rarely unhappier than when on the top of a remote Scottish mountain, and I see from there the wilderness destroyed by a grotesque industrial-scale Golgotha of wind turbines. If they weren't wind turbines, but were any other industrial construction, they wouldn't be allowed there (quite rightly). It should be no different in the case of wind turbines. They are industrial destroyers of our precious wilderness. But then how many "greens" get much beyond Brighton/London/Bath/Edinburgh etc?

Mark Hodgson, the Hymn "Jerusalem", anthem of the Women's Institute, and firm favourite for many who had to go to school chapel services on a regular basis, celebrates the rumour that Jesus visited the UK. "Amongst those Dark Satanic Mills" has acquired a different meaning, since William Blake wrote his poem in 1804.

The South Downs in Hampshire remain largely free. There was a scheme for wind turbines proposed that might have been visible from Broadhalfpenny Down near Hambledon, the site commemorated for being the "home" of cricket. There would have been complaints from batsmen about long periods of No Visible Movement behind the bowler's arm.

Nic
It's also interesting to compare the wind data against installed base, it's relatively easy to find data on amount of wind generation capability each year going back several years.
Because they are held up as good guys by greens I also have a look at German and Danish data from time to time. The German data lasr week (2016/44) is quite interesting neither wind nor solar contribute much on several days.

And for the sake of balancing my balance, wind is currently generating 2.6% of our electricity needs, on one of the coldest days of the season so far. As I said, it's bouncing around all over the place - I'm glad I don't have to run the National Grid.

SandyS, the Germans, Danes and Dutch are losing faith in wind. Dutch wind power not only helped to build the Dutch nation, and economy, but pumped their expanding territories dry.

golfCharlie. Almost all of the reclaimed Dutch lands were flooded in Medieval times. That's why they are called "reclaimed" rather than "claimed" lands. The Dutch were therefore only getting back from the sea what they formerly owned.