Nordic energy nonsense exposed
Energy consultant Keith Orchison has really nailed the ‘Nordic Myth’. That Denmark can show us the way to a clean, green energy future.
Yeah, right. Provided we can link up with someone, somewhere producing lots of reliable power from nuclear plants or, shudder, shudder, coal.
Yes, Denmark now notionally gets about 18 per cent of its electricity from wind — capping that from coal just below 50 per cent.
But that tells only part of the story, as Orchison writes on his Coolibah blog.
That is only possible because Denmark is linked to the power grids in Norway, Sweden and Germany.
So it can actually keep its lights on when the wind don’t blow. As it does — more correctly, doesn’t. And at its (the wind’s) choosing, not the power companies’.
As I’ve shown from Danish power statistics, at a point in time wind might be supplying 70 per cent of the country’s power. Yet 48 hours later is supplying almost zero.
When that happens Denmark has to immediately suck in power from its neighbours.
It can only do so easily because it is tiny and its demand can be easily accommodated by one or more of its neighbours.
The German power it takes comes from coal and nuclear plants; the Swedish from nuclear and hydro; the Norwegian from hydro.
No, Denmark is not acting as just a “go-between transmitter among the inter-connected Nordic countries”, as one journalist wrote attacking Orchison.
It is importing wicked nuclear and coal and, in the eyes of greens only slightly less wicked, hydro power because it has to.
It’s been able to be ‘pure’ by being able to welsh off bigger neighbours.
Partly pure. It’s still the world’s fifth biggest importer of coal, according to Orchison, citing no less an authority than Greenpeace!
Yes we can also be just as — pointlessly — (half) pure as Denmark, scattering useless wind farms across the landscape.
Provided we are prepared to build more coal or nuclear plants to actually generate power when that cussed wind don’t blow.
Unlike Denmark we don’t have big (dirty) neighbours. A long extension-cord to New Zealand wouldn’t cut it.
Terry McCrann
17 March 2009
Tags: Wind power, Wind energy
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