Piddling In The Wind

Friday.

The British Wind Energy Association provide very interesting reading for all you wind farm fans. There is a list of all operational sites here and a list of new sites for 2004 here.

Note that Projects currently under construction combined with wind farms online will provide 1.5% of UK electricity supply from 1,321 turbines by the end of 2005. This would be equivalent to the annual electricity needs of just under one million UK households or roughly half the needs of Outer London. Fear not London has its own wind farm at Ford Dagenham with two turbines

134 wind farms, 1,321 turbines and 1.5%. It all sounds like "piddling in the wind" to me. Massive disruption for minimal returns.

I quote Howard C. Hayden, Professor Emeritus of Physics, University of Connecticut,

"California has some 3200 wind turbines that, combined, produce only about 1.1% of California's electricity........even if California had 100 times as many windmills --- 320,000 windmills --- could they get 100% of their power from windmills? Not a chance. Most of the time, the windmills would produce very little power, and, of course, when there's no wind, there's no power at all. At those times, other power sources have to be ready to produce 100% of the power requirements. In short, windmills do not allow any other power plants to be taken out of service."

Read the article here.

Meanwhile people all over Scotland await rulings on whether their hills are to be brought to life with the sound of turbines.

Perthshire.

Argyll.

Blueyonder Bogsville subscribers continue to enjoy slow connectivity. I emailed them last Wednesday and this morning received the following reassuring message -

"Your message
To: Blueyonder
Subject: Helpsite form contents -- broadband user
Sent: Wed, 9 Feb 2005 10:35:38
did not reach the following recipient(s):
Host unreachable.