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Blowing it in the wind
Credit: Terry McCrann, Herald Sun, www.heraldsun.com.au 29 September 2010 ~~
Be afraid, be very afraid, of our politicians’ desperate infatuation with wind. It is going to cost you billions.
That’s made clear in an interesting analysis in Britain’s Sunday Telegraph of the numbers in the “world’s largest wind farm” off the Kent coast.
The array of 100 turbines, each the height of the Blackpool Tower is touted to produce 300 MW of electricity, enough to power 200,000 homes.
If, of course, the wind is blowing. The government’s own statistics showed that the average output of Britain’s offshore turbines was only 26 per cent of capacity.
So, cut the homes ‘supplied’ to barely half the claimed number, according to the Telegraph’s Christopher Booker. And the 300 MW to a real 75 MW.
And then there’s the cost. Britain’s power companies had to buy the wind power at THREE TIMES the normal British (already high relative to our) prices.
Exactly the same is the case in Australia. The politicians of both sides – to the eternal shame of the Liberal Party – are mandating we buy 20 per cent of our power from these ‘alternative sources’ by 2020.
Set aside dirty (to Greens) hydro power, there are only two – wind and solar. And in comparison with solar, which our Premier John Brumby wants to blanket the state with, wind is super-efficient and super-cheap!
Booker calculates the subsidy to the British turbines will add to nearly $2 billion and create just 21 full-time jobs at a cost of nearly $5 million per job per year.
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