The truth is starting to bite, and some people in power are not being fooled anymore.
Reality always bats last.
The installed wind generating capacity of Germany is rated at 23 GW, The power output on a good day during the last week might amount to 1/10th of that.
Hat tip to Klaus Allmendinger
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14 comments:
Nowhere on the planet has industrial wind energy proved it’s claims. It is expensive and unreliable. The wind industry is part of the E8 which is about the internationalization of energy. The wind farms are carbon credit creators. They have no other purpose.
The wind industry is a fraud and Western governments are complicit. They know that wind does not have the ability to keep the lights on; that wind is not capable of substantially cutting C02 emissions; and that wind cannot continually power anywhere near the number of homes the industry and their suppoters claim. Yet, these are all things being promoted by both the wind industry and the governments.
One can forgive the Green's to some extent because it is apparent that many of the rank-and-file in that group, simply do not know enough about the subject to make a rational analysis and are depending on the interpretations of others. But it is impossible for me to believe that any North American, or Western European government is that stupid.
However slowly but surely the truth about wind is being rubbed into the faces of its supporters, both by it's failure to offset CO2 and by the opposition to wind farms by rural populations, whom the Greens feel an affinity towards. We can only hope that they show as much enthusiasm opposing these installations, as they did supporting them - although I won't hold my breath.
You need to know that they have ~24 GW of installed wind capacity to fully appreciate how terrible that is.
Even those brief peaks up to ~5 GW in that graph are still only 25% of installed capacity.
Just by eyeballing the chart, it appears the average output over the 7 day period was about 1.5 GW, or about 5% of the installed capacity. This is abysmal. Though I don't know what the tax or energy credits wind receives in Germany, I can't imagine how any investor would look at a chart like this and decide to put their money into it.
The Ontario government cites Germany as the Holy Grail of renewable energy success in order to justify the imposition of the Green Energy Act. It is through the tireless efforts of people such as Mr. Barton that the limitations of renewable energy are finally being acknowledged. Delaying new nuclear builds, while spending billions on wind and solar, is the equivalent of spending all the grocery money on pop and chips instead of meat and potatoes-momentarily filling, but of no real substance.
Lynne, I love that analogy! It exactly what is going on.
Lynne , that really is a great analogy. - How about wind power is a 'symbol of stupidity'
Any chance of a source for that data?
Anonymous, Are you asking for the source for research purposes, or because you question the data? There is a link, I would suggest you follow it.
Powerful demonstration -- I used it in an energy talk today.
I appreciate the way it is updating -- not a static image.
Charles (or DV8 2XL), are you certain this is covering all 23 GW of installed wind in Germany? If it is, these consistent low figures are quite remarkable.
Charles, I'm not questioning the data, I just don't know what the data includes, or excludes, or any assumptions that might be built into its calculation. That chart's a pretty powerful statement, I before I raise it with the wind afficionados I'd like to know there's no hidden gotchas. Basically what Barry is asking to confirm.
The link throws up a .png. I see now I can deconstruct the url to try and hunt in the domain for the originating page, but its not really a source.
John, i attempted to deconstruct the link, and found myself on a complex, German language wind related site. There was no quick route back to the data representation. Such episodes of summer wind duldrums are by no means unusual and can effect wind spread areas. There is very limited literature on the summer wind problem, but it appears to be a big one.
Charles:
Good job at publicizing this.
As you know, there are several sites that provide real time data comparing demand vs wind energy production. A good one is BPA's: "http://www.transmission.bpa.gov/Business/Operations/Wind/default.aspx".
They have quite a few fine charts. The bottom line is that there is no correlation between demand and wind energy — which is a profoundly important matter.
See my online presentation for much more information: "http://www.slideshare.net/JohnDroz/energy-presentationkey-presentation".
john droz, jr.
physicist & environmental advocate
That transient on 09/07/09 looks nasty. It looks like an increase from 0 to 5.4 GW over the span of 1 hour. I bet the grid operators had to go all the way up to brown(...) alert for that one.
The source is Renewable Energy Information System on the Internet (REISI), There does not appear to be a link to the graph on the REISI online pages.
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