Liberal corruption and incompetence.

Corruption and Collusion in the Relationship, Between EPA and Faux-green Alarmist Groups.

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Back to Square One: Unlawful Collusion with Green Pressure Groups Should Doom U.S. EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Regulation

/ 2 hours ago July 30, 2015
EPA_collusion
Washington, D.C. — Today, the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal), a 501 (c) (3) watchdog group, released an investigatory report, Back to Square One: Unlawful Collusion with Green Pressure Groups Should Doom U.S. EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Regulation  and an appendix of source documents.  The report, which is based on e-mails and other documents obtained under numerous Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests and litigation, details illegal activities by EPA staff, colluding with certain environmental lobbyists to draft EPA’s greenhouse gas (GHG) rules behind the scenes, outside of public view, and to the exclusion of other parties.  More importantly, it clearly shows that EPA must start anew if it wishes to regulate GHGs. (A two-minute companion video is available for use.)
With EPA’s GHG rules going final any day, it is critical to inform the public of the emails detailed in this report for what they show about how EPA has developed these costly public policies with select, ideologically aligned outside interests, and its continuing efforts to obscure and even hide the content of discussions with those same lobbyists.
“E&E Legal has obtained proof that EPA’s GHG rules are the product of unlawful collusion and are themselves therefore unlawful,” said E&E Legal Senior Legal Fellow Chris Horner and author the report.  “Congress or the courts — or EPA, in a moment of rationality — should stop these rules from taking effect before the (intended) anticipatory harms of a sham rulemaking are imposed upon millions of Americans, without years of delay and devastation before the ultimately illegal agency rulemaking is overturned.”
EPA is a regulatory agency tasked with protecting the environment. EPA can regulate greenhouse gases thanks to the Supreme Court’s Massachusetts v. EPA decision. It is not compelled to do so, and it remains prohibited under the law from regulating with an “unalterably closed mind”, for the purposes of completing a “naked transfer of wealth”, or to do the bidding of ideologically aligned pressure groups.
“This pattern of conducting official business in secret and outside of the legal parameters is unfortunately a hallmark of this Administration,” said E&E Legal Executive Director Craig Richardson.  “In the case of the EPA, green groups led by the Sierra Club and NRDC set up shop at the EPA, even before Obama took office, with a plan to eliminate the U.S.’s most abundant source of electricity, coal-fired power plants.  Part of this was to shift the public’s wealth to renewable energy, where the large benefactors of these same green groups are now poised to make significant money.”
The report comes as President Obama prepares to announce these rules next week, and follows anE&E Legal interim report released last September which also showed that EPA was working with outside green lobby groups on a common regulatory agenda, often with deliberate secretiveness and unlawfully.   Since the 2014 report, E&E Legal has pried many hundreds of relevant emails out of EPA in several requests and lawsuits.  The record is not complete, of course, but reflects only those records responsive to E&E Legal’s search terms and that EPA, or its now-departed activist-staffers, decided to produce. EPA continues to improperly withhold certain obviously important information with no conceivable legal justification.

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The Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal) is a 501(c)(3) organization engaged in strategic litigation, policy research, and public education on important energy and environmental issues. Primarily through its petition litigation and transparency practice areas, E&E Legal seeks to correct onerous federal and state policies that hinder the economy, increase the cost of energy, eliminate jobs, and do little or nothing to improve the environment.

Exposing Another Wind Weasel Lie….

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Wind turbine syndrome is not confined to English-speaking countries!

Lilli-Ann Green gives evidence that wind turbines cause adverse health impacts for some people who live nearby in France, Germany, Holland, Denmark and Sweden.

SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON WIND TURBINES
Monday, 29 June 2015

Extract from Official Committee Hansard (page 1 to 6):

Lilli-Ann Green
Lilli-Ann Green
(Cape Cod Times/Ron Schloerb)

Ms Green: I am CEO of a healthcare consulting firm with a national reach in the United States. My company works in all sectors of the healthcare industry. One of the core competencies of the firm is to develop educational programs to help doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers better communicate with their patients around various disease states. Currently, as a volunteer in my town, I am secretary of our energy committee and a delegate to the Cape Cod National Seashore Advisory Commission as an alternate. Cape Cod National Seashore is part of the United States National Park Service. In the late 1970s, I built a passive solar superinsulated home. I directed an environmental education school for several years. I work seasonally as a naturalist interpretive ranger for the National Park Service. I have been interested and active in the environmental movement since the early seventies. Today, I speak as a private citizen.

CHAIR (Senator Madigan): Thank you. Could you please confirm that information on parliamentary privilege and the protection of witnesses and evidence has been provided to you?

Ms Green: It has.

CHAIR: Thank you. The committee has your submission and we now invite you to make a brief opening statement and at the conclusion of your remarks, I will invite members of the committee to put questions to you.

Ms Green: Thank you. Until the beginning of 2010, I believed wind turbines were good and green. My town was interested in constructing wind turbines and a friend visited my office in early March 2010 to provide my husband and business partner and me with new information. Following the visit, I spent the next 10 hours researching wind turbines. That very day, after concluding my research, I was saddened but I became convinced there was credible evidence that wind turbines cause adverse health impacts for some people who live nearby. In the past, over five years, I have learned it is a global phenomenon that wind turbines make some people who live nearby sick and it is a dose response so these people become more ill over time.

My husband, who is now deceased, and I travelled to Australia and New Zealand in 2010-11 and subsequently created a film called Pandora’s Pinwheels: The Reality of Living with Wind Turbines. We then travelled around the world in 2012 and conducted interviews in 15 different countries. Most of the people we interviewed expressed that they were in favour of wind energy prior to wind turbine construction nearby. There are some common symptoms people the world over report who live and work too close to wind turbines. A good summary is found in the book Wind Turbine Syndrome: A Report on a Natural Experiment by Nina Pierpont, MD, PhD.

It does not matter whether people live in English-speaking countries or in countries where people do not speak English. People reported to us they are made sick when they live too close to wind turbines, no matter what country they live in. We interviewed people in both English-speaking countries and non-English-speaking countries alike who reported to us they were not ill prior to wind turbine construction nearby and after the wind turbines were operational nearby they were made sick.

We interviewed people in five countries—France, Germany, Holland, Denmark and Sweden—who either needed an interpreter to speak with us or who spoke broken English. Some locations were quite rural with little or no internet connection. Still, the people we interviewed through interpreters expressed the same symptoms, others the world over described to us. These people with no or limited internet connection even used similar phrases, analogies and gestures, as others did globally to describe their symptoms. What we actually found is most people are reluctant to speak about their health problems.

In the United States, there are privacy laws regarding medical information. Culturally, people do not openly discuss their health problems with strangers. We found this to be the case in the countries we visited around the world. It was a brave person who opened up to us about their health problems. Usually, the people we interviewed expressed they wanted to help others. If anything, people tended to minimise their symptoms or try to attribute the symptoms to other circumstances. Even when they acknowledged a common symptom such as sleep deprivation, many people who experienced additional common symptoms were reluctant to attribute these other symptoms to the wind turbines nearby. Furthermore, people the world over reported that they and their healthcare providers puzzled over health problems that appeared after wind turbines were constructed near their homes.

Many endured a huge battery of medical tests to try to determine what the cause of their health problems were. The medical tests, at a huge cost to the healthcare system, only ruled out various diseases. Typically, the cause of their sickness was not diagnosed by their healthcare professional. Frequently, we heard that the patients would be in a social situation with others in their neighbourhood and eventually people they knew well confided they had similar health problems that recently appeared, or after research online about a different topic these people reported stumbling upon the cause of their health problems, which were the wind turbines constructed nearby.

We even interviewed people who lived for 11 years near wind turbines in a non-English speaking country—and that was in 2012. Several people came to an interview to talk about their property devaluation. It was only during the interviews when they heard others speak about health problems that the people realised they had been suffering because they lived too close to wind turbines. One man in his 80s sobbed during his interview. He had been visiting his doctor for 11 years trying to figure out what was wrong with his health.

The woman who invited us to interview her and her neighbours learned about health problems from wind turbines when she saw the film I produced Pandora’s Pinwheels, with interviews conducted in Australia and New Zealand, that was translated into her language. These people needed an interpreter; they did not speak English. She told me that her husband had passed away in the not too distant past due to heart problems. Before he died, he had complained quite frequently of common health symptoms people living near wind turbines experience. Although they visited their doctor frequently, no-one could figure out why he was so sick. She thanked us because, in seeing our film, it helped her to understand what her husband had been going through and why. It gave her closure that she did not have prior to viewing our film.

Another person at the interview told us she had to hold on to the walls of her house some days in order to walk from room to room and felt nauseous frequently. She knew she was unwell in her home and abandoned it. She did not know why until she saw our film. She came back to the area for the interview because she wanted to tell the world that wind turbines made her so ill that she sold her home at a huge loss.

One of the people I have known for the past five years lives in Falmouth, Massachusetts, which is very close to where I live—it is an hour and a half away. In 2010, he had recently retired to his dream home of many years. He was in great physical health, very fit and has over a 20-year record of normal to low to blood pressure. Since the wind turbines have been constructed in Falmouth, Massachusetts, he has reported that his blood pressure skyrockets to heart attack and stroke levels when the wind is coming in the wrong direction for him.

In Falmouth there are three wind turbines that are 1.65 megawatts near this person’s home. This person’s doctor, whom he has seen over the past 20 years, is in the Boston area and his doctor has been quite blunt. The doctor has told the patient that his life is in danger and he must move. Unfortunately, the Falmouth resident is crushed and cannot bear to leave his dream home at this point in time. He goes to other locations when the wind is predicted to be coming from the wrong direction. Others we interviewed in many different countries told us similar stories. Many reported they have abandoned their homes, sold their homes at a huge loss, purchased other homes to live in when the wind is coming from the wrong direction or in order to sleep in, and others spend time away from their homes at a huge and unexpected expense. People considered their homes as sanctuaries prior to the construction of wind turbines nearby. Now their opinion is not the same.

We have interviewed people on three continents who live more than five miles from the nearest wind turbine and are sick since wind turbine construction. I contend that we need honest research to determine how far wind turbines need to be sited from people in order to do no harm. People report to us that over time their symptoms become more severe. Many report not experiencing ill effects for some time following wind turbine construction, meanwhile their spouse became ill the day the wind turbines nearby became operational. They speak of thinking they were one of the lucky ones at first, but after a number of months or years they become as ill as their spouse. Not one person who stayed near wind turbines reported to us that they got used to it or got better; they all became more ill over time.

Since we are dealing with a dose response, we do not know over the projected lifetime of a wind turbine—say, 20 to 25 years—how far from people it is necessary to site wind turbines. To me, it is just wrong to knowingly harm the health and safety of people. There are responsible solutions to environmental issues that do not impact the health and safety of people nearby. Our humanity is in question when we continue to knowingly harm others. I thank you for your time today. I sincerely hope that you do take active steps to help the people in your country who are suffering due to living and working too close to wind turbines, and I am glad to answer questions you may have.

CHAIR: Thank you.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Good morning, Ms Green—I suppose it is not morning there. Thank you for your submission—

Ms Green: No, it is Sunday evening here.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Sunday evening? I am sorry to being interrupting your evening.

Ms Green: I am glad to speak with you.

Senator LEYONHJELM: You have interviewed people in 15 countries, I think you said, under all different circumstances and so on. I appreciate we are not pretending this is a gold-plated, statistical survey, but I am interested in your impressions because I think you have more experience of this than any other witness we have heard from. What do you think, based on your experience, are the common factors in the people you have interviewed in different communities living near wind turbines? What are the common factors to all of them?

Ms Green: I think we seriously do not have enough research to understand this problem fully. We saw the same symptoms. Slide 17 that I submitted has a listing of the common symptoms that Dr Pierpont lists in her book. I really believe that we just do not have enough information yet. But throughout the interviews, country by country, people described the same symptoms. Many times they used the same phrases to describe them and the same gestures—even if they were not speaking English. There is a common thread here.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Do you get the impression that not everybody exposed to wind turbines is affected the same? Have you seen evidence of substantial individual variation?

Ms Green: I have, indeed. Just as some people are more prone to asthma and some people are more prone to lung cancer, let’s say, or any disease, we did see a variation. It appeared that if there were people who were, say, prone to migraine headaches, they were severely affected. But, again, there were people who did not seem to have the symptoms who were living either in the same house or nearby. I do not know whether it is a question of time, if over 20 years people become more sensitised and they will become sick. Very frequently we did hear the same theme running through the stories of the people we interviewed, where, say, the husband thought he was one of the lucky ones and six months later he could not sleep, he was experiencing ear pressure, ear pain and severe headaches or other symptoms.

Senator LEYONHJELM: We are aware of community groups in English-speaking countries who have expressed opposition to wind turbines, but we are not aware of that sort of phenomenon in non-English speaking countries. Have you encountered that?

Ms Green: Yes, indeed. We travelled around the world. It was a 10-year goal. We had it very well planned out and we thought it was for pleasure. But people kept emailing us and asking us to come and interview them. So we met people in a lot of non-English speaking countries, and they were such nice people, I have to say. They had just about any profession you would like to mention. They just wanted to tell their story. Many times these people wanted to talk to us for other reasons such as their house had been devalued because the wind turbines were nearby. As they were listening to other people in the room talking about their health problems, these people realised that they had been struggling with the same illness since the wind turbines were constructed nearby. They had never made that correlation before; in fact, they were quite frustrated. They told us that they would go back and back continually to their healthcare provider and talk about these symptoms, and they could not find a resolution or a reason. As I said, there is one man I recall quite vividly just sobbing—and that was in 2012; he was in his 80s. He had realised that since the wind turbines had been constructed nearby he was experiencing these symptoms that were the common symptoms.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Some witnesses have suggested to us that there is a relationship between not only the distance their residence is from the turbine but also the power of the turbine, the size of the turbine. Have you been able to come to any conclusions on that or is that outside your interest area?

Ms Green: No, it is not outside my interest area. In fact, it is quite alarming to me, because I have interviewed people who live near wind turbines that you in Australia would probably consider to be quite small and solitary—wind turbines that are 100 kilowatts, even—and they are experiencing health problems, even people living near a 10-kilowatt wind turbine. Frankly, it is the nearest wind turbine to where I live, and a number of neighbours are having problems, and not just with the audible noise but with the infrasound and low-frequency noise, based upon the symptoms they are reporting to me. It really is quite alarming. In my state, Massachusetts, there is a woman who has told me she lives more than five miles from the nearest wind turbine and she is quite ill. The onset of her symptoms was when the wind turbine was constructed. When she went on trips she was fine; when she came back she was ill, and it has only become worse over time. That wind turbine is not as powerful as wind turbines in Australia, and it is a solitary wind turbine.

Again, we travelled quite a distance in France—mid-south-eastern France—over a number of days at the invitation of the people in the area and visited several different communities where there were wind turbines. One of the situations is that the wind turbine is 10 kilometres from one of the neighbours who is very ill and 12 kilometres from the other neighbour. The person who lives 12 kilometres away reported to us that she had been very supportive of the wind turbines. She is very well known as an environmentalist in the area, has quite a reputation as an environmentalist and is highly regarded. But she is quite ill, and it was very difficult for her to speak with us.

The other person related a story of trying to detect what the problem was because he could not sleep and was becoming so frustrated that he would go in his car to try to find the source of what was keeping him awake. He talked about going night after night until he went into the wilderness. He could not imagine what was there, and then he found the wind turbines. They were creating a humming noise in his head at that point. He could actually hear this frequency. In our discussions with researchers, medical professionals and scientists, one of the scientists told us that what people hear is mostly a bell curve—that is the way it was described to us. Most people hear audible noise within a certain range, but there are people who are more sensitive to noise, and they hear sounds that most people would consider inaudible.

Senator URQUHART: I have a lot of questions. I am not going to get through them all, so I am wondering whether you are able to take some on notice at the end.

Ms Green: I will try. I am very busy, but I will try.

Senator URQUHART: In your submission you say you run a healthcare consultancy. Do you have any qualifications in health care or medicine?

Ms Green: I have a background in education.

Senator URQUHART: What is the name of your company?

Ms Green: I do not want that on the record.

Senator URQUHART: Can I ask why?

Ms Green: I am speaking today as a private citizen. I would be glad to give you that information if it is held as in-confidence.

Senator URQUHART: Okay. How many employees do you have?

Ms Green: My husband has passed away. He was my business partner, and I have scaled back the business. I am the only employee at this point in time. However, I will tell you that I have created in our company, with teams of people, educational programs that have been implemented throughout the United States. One of the oncology programs that was created by my team, which was quite a large team, interviewed over 100 oncology patients throughout the United States and numerous doctors and nurses and was mandatory for all of the oncology nurses in the Kaiser health system in California.

Senator URQUHART: In your submission you say that 300,000 physicians and healthcare professionals have undertaken training through your company.

Ms Green: That is correct.

Senator URQUHART: What are the products or services? Is it communication? What is it that you actually sell?

Ms Green: There is a number of different core competencies in our company. One is developing educational programs around different disease states, such as oncology, diabetes, heart disease and various other disease states. Another path we have taken is to develop a service quality initiative. My husband was an extraordinary speaker and was often the keynote speaker for national conferences in all sectors of the healthcare industry.

Senator URQUHART: In your opening statement you talked about how you had interviewed many people from various countries. I could not find any of the transcripts, either in your submission or online. I am sorry if I have missed them.

Ms Green: You have not missed them. In the company we are still in the process of editing the films. It was a huge undertaking of many months, at huge expense. There is a lot of information that is still being edited.

Senator URQUHART: Are you able to provide copies of the transcripts and the full names of the people you interviewed?

Ms Green: No. It is on film; it is videotaped interviews, and the film is being edited.

Senator URQUHART: You talked about how you undertook the research after you had new information from people within your area who were concerned about wind farms. Was that the purpose of the interviews?

Ms Green: No. In my town, one month after we learned that our energy committee wanted to put one 1.65 wind turbine in our town—and we had conducted the research and people in our town were quite concerned—our board of selectmen, which is like your town councils, decided to not move forward with the project. I am now on my energy committee, as secretary, and we are devising a plan to become 100 per cent electrical energy efficient without wind energy but using other alternative methods. Are you asking me what propels me to do the interviews?

Senator URQUHART: Yes. I guess my real reasoning was whether the purpose of the interviews was to inform the body of research on international attitudes to wind farms. Is that why—

Ms Green: No. It is not an attitude; it is to understand the realities of living near wind turbines—living, working, attending school, being incarcerated near wind turbines.

What happened was that my stepson was living in Australia and we went to Australia at the end of 2010. I knew there was a location called Waubra and I had seen the Dean report that had been recently published. I put out one little email asking ‘We will be in the Melbourne area and is it possible to meet some of the people that are living near the wind turbines at Waubra? Is it possible to see the Waubra area?’

It was amazing that I was connected with the people in that area of Australia. My husband and I drove to the area and we interviewed over 17 people in one day. They welcomed us into their homes. We did not know what to expect. We turned the camera on and we asked them questions, and they told us their story. We had no idea what we were going to find. We went to New Zealand and people emailed us after they had heard we had been to Waubra. They asked us if we would come and visit them and interview them. We did that in two different locations in New Zealand. When we came home we put together this film called Pandora’s Pinwheels—

Senator URQUHART: You interviewed people—

Ms Green: During our 2012 travels we just thought we would go back to Waubra and talk to the people at Waubra because we had been emailing them over the year. But people around the world kept on emailing us and asking us to come and interview them.

Senator URQUHART: So you conducted interviews in 15 countries, as I understand it from your submission. Is that how you got the contact information on the people you interviewed?

Ms Green: I do not understand your question. Everywhere we were travelling people kept on emailing us and contacting us and asking if we would come and interview them and talk with them. They wanted to go on camera and tell their story. We had no agenda; we had no plan. We work in the healthcare industry; we talk about various illnesses and disease states, and we educate doctors and nurses about disease states. I am sorry; I want to retract that: we find a cross-section where patients are having issues with the communication around their disease state, and the doctors and nurses are having issues around communicating with their patients. We find those intersections and help doctors and nurses better communicate with the patients. So we are trying to improve patient care. That is what we do as one of the core competencies of our business.

When we found the health problems with the wind turbines and when we saw in every country we visited that people were saying the same thing, we wanted to get that word out to people like you who are hearing from your constituents that they are having health problems. That is all I want to do—to provide you with the truth.

Senator DAY: Ms Green, as you might imagine, we have received submissions from hundreds of people who have reported adverse health impacts and yet we are being accused of trying to destroy the wind industry. We are being accused of rigging this inquiry and of being engaged in a political stitch up. What has been your experience with such hostility towards genuine inquiry?

Ms Green: I really do not have a response for you, Senator. I have heard a lot of stories from people and I have experiences myself, but I really do not have a response on that topic.

Senator DAY: Okay. I will follow up then: you say that a number of governments around the world are realising there is a need for more or better regulation surrounding the wind energy industry. Which governments are doing better in this area, in your opinion?

Ms Green: I know that in my state, I have a new governor and my governor has a background in health care, and I am expecting that my governor understands that people do have health problems when they live and work too close to wind turbines in my state.

Senator BACK: Ms Green, I have just one quick question; I know that we are over time. In Australia, we are proceeding to have independent medical research undertaken for the first time. One of the proposals put to us is that they try and simulate this effect of either noise or infrasound, and do so in a one-off exposure in a clinically sterile circumstance for exposure times of somewhere between 10 to 30 minutes and an hour. From what you have learned and heard—and from interviewing people—do you think there would be anything to be learned in exposing somebody for a very limited period of time, and once only, in a sort of laboratory-type circumstance? Do you believe that is likely to lead to any reasonable outcome or result that we might be able to use?

Ms Green: Senator, I am not a researcher or a doctor. But given what I have heard from people and what people have reported to me, I find it highly unlikely that that would have any results that would have any validity.

Senator BACK: Thank you.

CHAIR: Thank you for evidence today to the committee, Ms Green. You will receive questions on notice and if you are able to come back to us with answers to those, that would be appreciated.

Ms Green: Absolutely. I would like to thank the committee; the chair, Senator Madigan, and the members of the committee, and also to thank you, Graham.

CHAIR: Thank you, Ms Green.

Lilli-Ann Green’s evidence

The complete Hansard is available at ParlInfo:
Senate Select Committee on Wind Turbines – 29/06/2015

Lilli-Ann Green’s evidence

Lilli-Ann Green’s submission to the Australian Senate Select Committee on Wind Turbines:

Presentation by Lilli-Ann Green

“Pandora’s Pinwheels: The Reality of Life with Wind Turbines”
Australia and New Zealand

Introduction and Background of those interviewed – experts, journalist, people who live in three separate areas too close to wind turbines

INDEX:

  • 10:46 – Prior Attitudes
  • 13:14 – People felt lied to
  • 28:03 – Noise, the many facets of wind turbine noise and how it is different from other industrial noise
  • 53:37 – Health impacts and how close is too close; some people live over 2 miles from the nearest turbine
  • 1:18:51 – Shadow, blade flint, flicker, red flashing lights
  • 1:23:00 – Property values
  • 1:31:34 – Community fracture
  • 1:37:48 – Quality of Life; Amenity
  • 1:45:44 – What would you tell others if a wind developer comes to a community
  • 1:49:09 – Conclusion

Dr. Robert McMurtry Tells Australian Senate Inquiry About Adverse Health Effects From Wind Turbines!

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Dr Robert McMurty tells Senate: ‘Annoyance’ caused by Wind Turbine Noise includes ‘Sleep disturbance’ & is Adverse to Health

July 29, 2015 by

senate review

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The Senate Inquiry has had to wade through a fairly pungent cesspit of ‘material’ dropped on it by the wind industry, its parasites and spruikers. No doubt to their great relief (or, in the case of wind industry stooge, Anne Urquhart, infuriation) the Senators have heard from a raft of genuine and highly qualified people, who are clearly dedicated to protecting their fellow human beings – rather than ridiculing, denigrating or deriding them as “anti-wind farm wing-nuts” or “Dick Brains”.

One voice of common sense and compassion – to the contrary of the nasty nonsense pitched up by the shills that run interference for their wind industry clients – came from Dr Bob McMurty – a highly (and relevantly) qualified Professor from Ontario. Here’s what Bob told the Australian Senate.

Senate Select Committee on Wind Turbines – 29 May 2015

CHAIR: I now welcome Dr Bob McMurtry by teleconference. For the Hansard record, will you please state your name and the capacity in which you appear.

Dr McMurtry: My name is Robert Younghusband McMurtry. The capacity in which I appear today is as an independent witness: I am Professor Emeritus of Western University in London, Ontario, and I have been researching and reviewing this topic for the past eight years; I probably have put in over 10,000 hours over those years. In addition, I have been in communication with or—more to the point—people have been in communication with me who are suffering adverse health effects. I have detailed my curriculum vitae and its summary. I will stop there.

CHAIR: Thank you. Could you please confirm that information on parliamentary privilege and the protection of witnesses and evidence has been provided to you?

Dr McMurtry: I can confirm it has.

CHAIR: The committee has your submission. I now invite you to make a brief opening statement. At the conclusion of your remarks, I will invite members of the committee to put questions to you.

Dr McMurtry: Thank you for the privilege of presenting to this committee. I will make 10 points that are in my executive summary on the assumption that the material has been read. First, adverse health effects have been reported globally in the environs of wind turbines for more than 30 years with the old design and the new. Second, the wind energy industry has denied adverse health effects, preferring to call it ‘annoyance’ even though annoyance, however, is an adverse health effect. Certainly it is a non-trivial effect when sustained because it results in ‘sleep disruption’, ‘stress’ and ‘psychological distress’—those are direct quotes from others’ research. Third, annoyance is recognised and was treated by the World Health Organization as an adverse health effect, which is a risk factor for serious chronic disease including cardiovascular and cancer.

Fourth, experts retained by the wind energy industry have preferred the diagnosis of nocebo effect to explain the adverse health effects, but the claim does not withstand critical scrutiny as there is a dose-response effect and nocebo does not have a dose-response effect. And there is a clear correlation between exposure and adverse health effects. Researchers have talked about dose-response. I should also comment that making that diagnosis without a comprehensive evaluation of a person or patient would qualify as non-practice, and I know that has been said in this committee before.

Fifth, the regulations surrounding noise exposure are based upon out-of-date standards ETSU-97, which fail to evaluate infrasound and low-frequency noise, preferring instead to use DBA. The issue of ILFN is a problem and it has been confirmed by numerous acousticians including Paul Schomer, a leading international acoustician. Sixth, the setbacks for wind turbines are highly variable across jurisdictions and here is the key point: there is no evidence base in human health research for the setbacks. The turbines have gone ahead without an evidence base.

Seven, there is an urgent need for human health research to provide evidence based guidelines for noise exposure. Eight, the call for third-party research and evaluation has been made by many including in France by the Academy of Medicine of France in 2006 and many times since. As I detailed to you, I made it before government bodies in Canada. Nine, there is an urgent need to monitor the health effects of people exposed to turbines over time and that has been missing virtually in all jurisdictions. Tenth, third-party evaluations of the economic and social benefits of wind energy are needed as suggested by the findings of the Auditor-General of Ontario—I sent his reports to you including highlights—and more recently by the Northern Ireland Assembly committee, and I understand that is part of the charge of this committee. With that, I would be very happy to answer questions.

CHAIR: Is it correct to say that in your experience there are different streams of opposition to wind turbines in the wider public? For example, one stream opposes the technology outright but another supports the use of technologies as long as they are appropriately regulated to safeguard people and the environment. Which stream are you in, Dr McMurtry?

Dr McMurtry: I am in the stream that says positioned safely and on an evidence base with, as I mentioned, guidelines. I think that is fine. There are clear applications for wind turbines when they are appropriately deployed, which is not happening currently.

CHAIR: There is a growing community of medical experts, doctors and acoustic engineers questioning the adverse health impacts of wind turbines and inadequate regulatory standards. On the basis of your knowledge on an international level, how are the opinions and standing of these professionals treated publicly by the wind energy industry?

Dr McMurtry: I am afraid there is a routine strategy that proponents of wind turbines, including the industry, on websites will name people and pillory them basically, assail their reputations. That is something that has been seen internationally, most specifically towards Dr Nina Pierpont from the United States, and towards Dr Sarah Laurie in Australia. But I have certainly experienced it personally to a lesser extent. It seems to be: if you do stick-up and say something or you have concerns about the wind industry then you can expect to be attacked.

Senator BACK: We know that.

CHAIR: Your submission comments on researchers in the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT undertaking research for the Canadian Wind Energy Association and also providing expert testimony to wind farm developers in its planning tribunals. I note you say here, however, they did not declare an interest when the research was published. You describe this behaviour as ‘odd’ in your submission. From a professional perspective, what does ‘odd’ mean? What are the professional requirements or etiquette when publishing research and declaring an interest?

Dr McMurtry: The key is to declare a conflict and that was done in the sense that they described their engagements with the wind turbine industry, especially Dr McCunney the lead author, and Dr David Colby. So that was done. But it is only a first step when you declare a conflict. There are many other things you should do to manage the potential conflict of interest, in particular take special care to control for bias. There are various ways of doing that.

I do not want to say negative things about Dr McCunney; I am sure he is a very capable person does good work in this field. The wind industry put the money before MIT and it was from that funding that the research was carried out. It was from funding of the wind industry an earlier part he participated in with the Canadian Wind Energy Association. He appears frequently on behalf of the wind industry and he references his work in both the papers I have cited. I view that as stretching things. I think some better management of the conflicts ought to be carried out. Two points, for example, could be: bring it before an ethics committee or at least get that kind of advice.

CHAIR: Finally, later in your submission I note you discuss the origins of nocebo. I presume from that discussion, you are aware of Prof. Simon Chapman and his work?

Dr McMurtry: I am aware of Prof. Simon Chapman, yes.

CHAIR: Prof. Chapman has also provided expert testimony to a wind farm developer in a planning tribunal but does not declare his interest in subsequent publications. Is there some sort of professional amnesty that allows researchers to withhold disclosure of their interest? How do researchers and practitioners like yourself perceive that kind of behaviour amongst your peers? And what impact does this have on the professional standing of researchers more generally and the tenor of the debate and understanding in the industrial wind turbine area?

Dr McMurtry: There are a lot of elements to that question. The key consideration is that you should always declare a conflict of interest and manage it appropriately so that there is no discomfort being experienced by colleagues from whom you want to seek their opinions. As I said, an ethics committee would be included in that consideration. More importantly, the WHO and many other bodies have found that research sponsored by industry does not have the objectivity that characterises independent research. That has been described time and again with industry. I believe Dr Chris Hanning spoke to that in some detail at his presentation, the sorts of difficulties that you get into. As far as peers are concerned, when you are receiving money and it is a substantial amount for each appearance then I think ought to be extremely cautious about declaring and making a statement as he did in this most recent paper, ‘I declare no conflict of interest.’ That was what I found to be particularly odd. That quotation is included in my submission.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Thank you for your submission. I found it extremely illuminating, very thorough and you addressed many questions that I had in my mind so I really do appreciate it. What I am curious about though is you are a very experienced medical doctor. You have come down fairly clearly in support of annoyance as being the source of the adverse complaints that people have about wind turbines. We have heard from other witnesses who have suggested a vestibular effect, an effect on the vestibular mechanism and others who have suggested either the middle ear or perhaps inner ear. Why have you nominated annoyance as the source? Have you discounted the others? Or is there something else?

Dr McMurtry: Not at all. I do not mean to discount the other symptoms. I have referenced the diagnostic criteria for being exposed to wind turbines and suffering adverse effects. It was most recently in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine in the fall of 2014. Those sorts of additional symptoms are listed. What I have made clear, and this was first done by Pederson in her many papers, is that annoyance in the context of wind turbines translates to ‘stress, psychological distress, difficulty initiating sleep and sleep disruption’—I believe those words, although from memory, are a direct quote—so it is a very serious business. The most common problems without question we find are sleep disturbance and stress. Those two are always there. Vestibular disturbance we are also finding. There is no question though when the vestibular gets perturbed, it can make you uneasy, make you feel unwell or nauseated, for example. It may be the mechanism. I am in no way discounting it and it is considered in my diagnostic criteria.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Do you have a feel for what proportion of the community that lives within a nominated distance of wind turbines or a wind farm actually experiences any symptoms?

Dr McMurtry: The lowest number I have ever seen is five per cent. The highest number I have seen is over 30 per cent. There is a range. Firstly, with ongoing exposure, the people I have seen who have been adversely affected become worse. Secondly, increasing numbers of people become adversely affected. What is missing in the research is longitudinal studies. Dr McCunney and I agree on this in terms of his paper that I was talking about earlier. What is needed is something more than cross-sectional epidemiological studies, which are studies at one point in time. They do not follow people longitudinally. Following people longitudinally—that is, over time—is crucial to understand the adverse effects. That has not been done. I agree that we should have cohort studies—that means a group exposed, a group not exposed—and compare them over time, and then you will have some notion of incidence. Anecdotally, when dealing with people, I have found that some do not start experiencing symptoms until a year or two out. I think the incidence might very well go up, and that is a concern.

In relation to the other research, if I may say before stopping again, there has been a missed opportunity. We absolutely should be doing the sort of work that has been done by Steven Cooper, where he looked at six people in three homes. They were adversely affected. You have to study those folks to understand the mechanism better. That is research that is really needed. It is only when that research is done, when we can hone down on the mechanism of the problem, that we can then inform the prospectus for the longitudinal studies of cohorts of people. I hope that is clear. You need research on adversely affected people to understand the mechanism and, secondly, of course, that you confirm that they meet the diagnostic criteria and that their adverse effects are reproducible when they are blinded. You want to do that to be sure. You have that group. Then you want to know exactly what is occurring. Steven Cooper moved things ahead great deal. Then you are well put up for the place to do the cohort studies or the longitudinal studies.

Senator LEYONHJELM: That does raise a question though. These sorts of questions have been asked; there have been complaints about wind turbines. You have been studying this now for six or seven years. Why is it that no definitive, independent research into this has been conducted over those years? It is quite a long time.

Dr McMurtry: I agree with you. I am dismayed by that, especially when it has been asked for nine years. It is coming back to the Academy of Medicine of France. I have pointed out many times in my publications and in my government presentations that there are two opinions and both cannot be right. One is that adverse effects are genuinely occurring and people are being harmed. The other opinion is that that is not the case and that it is in the news, a nocebo effect, or some other manageable problem. Both cannot be right. Always, I have heard calls for research from those concerned about adverse health effects. I have not heard them from those who are proponents—and certainly not from the industry.

To give you a very specific example, Paul Schomer, previously cited, is a leading acoustician internationally known for his standards for noise. He asked Duke Energy—and he has published this—to turn the turbines off and on, and they said they would not. That is pretty much the response you do get. There have been offers to do that. The Steven Cooper work was exceptional because the person who was responsible for that turbine installation in fact did turn off the turbines to enable him to do that research. I believe it was Cape Bridgewater.

CHAIR: Thank you, Senator Leyonhjelm. Senator Urquhart?

Dr McMurtry: By the way, I have debated publicly with proponents, including David Colby. I have always challenged, ‘Why don’t we do the research. Let’s settle this’, and the response has been: ‘There is no need.’ That is the response I have heard in debates, for example.

CHAIR: Thank you, Dr McMurtry. Senator Urquhart?

Senator URQUHART: Thanks, Dr McMurtry. I was just picking up the point that you talked about where the lowest number of people affected by wind farms was five per cent—I think I understood you correctly there—and the highest was 30 per cent. Did I understand you correctly?

Dr McMurtry: Yes you did. That has been the studies to date. As I mentioned, longitudinal studies may reveal a higher number.

Senator URQUHART: Can you just explain to me why the majority of wind farms in Australia do not have any complaints at all.

Dr McMurtry: I think I have heard Simon Chapman make that complaint, if that is who you are quoting. What I noticed about his research is that he was going to the wind farm people themselves and asking them if there were adverse health reports. That does not withstand critical appraisal. You must have an independent determination to determine if in fact there was a problem. That to me undermines this facility, substantially. So I think that claim is dubious. I will stop there.

Senator URQUHART: I did not hear that last point.

Dr McMurtry: The point I made is that when you are trying to glean information from the industry, whose interest is harmed by acknowledging problems, then you are not likely to get as accurate an answer than if you had independent determination of people’s complaints. I am speaking specifically about Simon Chapman’s work, and looking at his methodology.

Senator URQUHART: Do you live or have you lived near an existing or proposed wind farm?

Dr McMurtry: Yes. I do not live near a proposed wind farm. I live near one that is going to be built something in the neighbourhood of 1½ kilometres away. At the moment it is before the courts.

Senator URQUHART: I understand that you are a founder of the Society for Wind Vigilance. Is that right?

Dr McMurtry: Yes, in 2010. I was the founding chair, from 2010 to 2012, at which point I resigned.

Senator URQUHART: The status of the proposal is before the courts, I think you indicated?

Dr McMurtry: That is correct. There is always more than one proposal on the go, but the one that is most proximate to me is still in review legally, through a judicial process.

Senator URQUHART: How is the Society for Wind Vigilance funded?

Dr McMurtry: Just by donations from members.

Senator URQUHART: Who are the major donors?

Dr McMurtry: There is no major donor. The only income the Society for Wind Vigilance ever received was when they held a first conference in adverse health effects, which is described in my submission. We charged people $100 to come, as I recall. We realised some income from that. There was no surplus, I can assure you, because we had to cover the cost of the food and all the usual things you do with a conference. We have received no money whatsoever from any energy-related industry. Not ever.

Senator URQUHART: What about from other companies or organisations?

Dr McMurtry: No private enterprise company, no for-profit company, no agency and no charitable agency. Nothing. That has been suggested before. It is disturbing to me, because we are recurrently having to repeat what to me is obvious: there has simply been no financial support coming from outside. None.

Senator URQUHART: I think it is good to get that on the record. Thank you. Have you ever published any work in a peer-reviewed academic journal about the possible impacts of wind farms.

Dr McMurtry: Yes, probably several times. That is included in my submission. For example, I published two papers on the criteria for diagnosis: one in 2011 in the Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society, and the second one in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, in either October or November of 2014. I have also submitted the peer-reviewed blogs from the Canadian Medical Association Journal, which is the lead journal in Canada, where I comment on the Health Canada study. That was peer-reviewed. We have also had something accepted that I submitted in confidence for the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. In addition, I have presented before the Acoustical Society of America. I have presented before government at three levels: municipal, provincial and federal.

Senator URQUHART: I wanted to pick up on the point about the Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society. I understand that this publication was de-indexed in 1995.

Dr McMurtry: SAGE Publications have since resurrected it. It now is appearing in the Index Medicus. More significantly, the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine has been a recognised journal for over 100 years. The Index Medicus did not come along until later, or the similar indices. It is a progression from towards the diagnostic criteria, which is in the Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society to the second paper on diagnostic criteria, which was in 2014. That is a journal that is well recognised.

Senator BACK: In the PowerPoint presentation you sent us, you comment on biological gradients: that greater exposure should generally lead to greater incidence of the effect. It causes me to ask about the proposal with the independent medical research that has been commissioned now by the Abbott government her in Australia. One witness has proposed to our inquiry that a one-off, laboratory-based test for audible and infrasound could be undertaken with people who participate for periods of somewhere around about 10 to 30 minutes, or maybe up to an hour, once only. From your experience do you believe that the results of a study of that type would be of any value in determining possible adverse health effects?

Dr McMurtry: I think it would have value, but not in and of itself. It is perhaps a necessary but insufficient condition. There are features of industrial wind turbine noise that, when people are in their homes, are very different from in the laboratory setting, and capturing all that in the laboratory setting is virtually impossible. This is basically unwanted noise and unpredictable noise. It occurs at night. It pulses and it also has the quality of resonating within the home. The sound energy comes out—it may be low-frequency or infrasound—and there can be resonance in the home. That cannot be captured in the laboratory. Some people, for example, are being disturbed at night and go outside and they are less disturbed. I would cite in particular Malcolm Swinbanks, a well-known acoustician, who described that very thing and presented it in Glasgow two or there months ago. That has been reported by many people. It has been sound for as long as 30 years ago.

Senator BACK: People have put to us that infrasound can occur from waves crashing on the beach and trucks going along highways, and therefore there is nothing special about infrasound from industrial wind turbines, so why all the fuss. Could you comment on the different sources of infrasound and how they might affect people?

Dr McMurtry: What is very important here is to realise that my background is not as an acoustician. You might be better to direct that question to an acoustician. To answer as best as I am able, the acousticians have pointed out that there is a unique signature to wind turbine noise that has not be found elsewhere. I cite, for example, Steven Cooper, whom you have heard. There is also the recent work of Paul Schomer, as well as the 2012 publication with Walker, Hessler, Hessler, Rand and himself, in which they made clear that there were non-auditory and non-visual queues that disturbed people. The other sources of infrasound that people are talking about do not mimic, are not the same as, the signature that is coming from wind turbines. It is unprecedented, so it is crucial that any research captures exactly what people are experiencing.

Senator BACK: You made a comment a moment ago in response to a question from a colleague that you had commented on the Health Canada study. Briefly, could you point us to what your comments were on the Health Canada study?

Dr McMurtry: Yes. You have a copy of that in my submission. It is the CMAJ submission and, I think, appendix 7. Ms Carmen Krogh and I did it. I recently was on the same panel with David Michaud and I pointed out some of the shortcomings, but the single most important one is that it is a cross-sectional study. There are other important problems. They started out with 2,004 houses and some 400 were ruled out of scope—424, as I recall; I am going by memory—and then, when they sent out the questionnaires, another 322 dropped out, which left 766 out of the original group. I wish there had been an analysis of the abandoned or non-eligible homes. I think an opportunity was lost there. Another opportunity lost is that the people most often affected—and I certainly know this from my own experience—are people who are over 79 and under 18. Children are more vulnerable than, say, young adults or middle-aged adults. The Health Canada study looked at people from 18 to 79 and then excluded the rest. They are leaving out the most vulnerable groups.

Senator BACK: Thank you very much. I appreciate that advice.

CHAIR: Thank you, Dr McMurtry, for your appearance before the committee today.

Dr McMurtry: I thank you very much for this opportunity.

Hansard, 29 May June 2015

Dr McMurtry’s evidence is available from the Parliament’s website here. And his submission is available here in a Zip file: documents

bob mcmurtry

What Happens When “Novelty Energy”, is Used to Power a Nation!

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UK’s Wind Power Debacle Deepens: Widespread Winter Blackouts Forecast

July 28, 2015 by

hell-freezing-over1

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The lunatics that push wind power are being forced to face up to the fact that it is – and will always be – meaningless as a power generation source. Which to the sane and rational is no surprise: a ‘system’ that relies on the vagaries of the weather isn’t a ‘system’ – it’s ‘chaos’. Here’s a tale from Britain on just where that chaos is heading.

Britain could face blackouts if the wind doesn’t blow
Emily Gosden
17 July 2015
The Telegraph

National Grid proposes bringing in emergency measures to bolster electricity supplies as new analysis shows power crunch worsening

Britain could face blackouts if the wind doesn’t blow in winter 2016-17, unless emergency measures are brought in to bolster electricity supplies, official analysis suggests.

Output from Britain’s power plants would not be enough to meet peak demand if there was “low wind” meaning the thousands of wind turbines across the country would generate very little electricity, forecasts show.

Old mothballed power plants are now likely to be paid millions of pounds to fire back up or factories paid to switch off at peak times, under proposed emergency measures to ensure the lights stay on.

Normally, the UK’s electricity grid has a spare capacity “margin” meaning more power is available than is expected to be needed to meet peak demand.

The margin ensures that “consumers are not affected” if demand for electricity increases unexpectedly – such as in a cold snap – or power plants break down, Ofgem says.

But the margin has eroded in recent years as environmental regulations force the closure of old coal-fired power plants.

Emergency measures to keep the lights on were first introduced last winter, when the margin fell to 4.1 per cent, and are also in place for this winter, when the margin is expected to fall to 1.2 per cent.

The measures had not been expected to be needed in winter 2016-17, but officials now believe the situation could worsen significantly as more plants may be closed, meaning the margin could fall to zero .

With unusually low wind, the margin could fall to minus 1.1 per cent – meaning peak demand exceeds the amount of power typically available.

National Grid has now proposed extending the emergency measures for two more winters.

An Ofgem spokesman said: “In a small minority of scenarios there is the possibility of negative margins. But the likelihood of these sorts of circumstances is very low.

“Even if this were to occur, National Grid already has a range of tools at its disposal to balance supply and demand without having to resort to controlled disconnections.”

A National Grid spokesman said: “While we want an adequate safety cushion to manage unforeseen events on the network, negative margins do not mean blackouts.”

Peter Atherton, analyst at Jefferies, said the UK was heading into “uncharted territory, where the underlying situation on the system is becoming very unstable and therefore National Grid is having to deploy more and more emergency measures to compensate”.

“These emergency measures should work, but there is clearly a greater risk of a security of supply incident than we have been used to,” he said.

Telegraph analysis earlier this year showed that peak demand coincided with the lowest wind output of the winter just gone.

In its security of supply report, Ofgem said: “There is a widespread belief that the wind stops blowing when there is a severe cold spell, resulting in lower wind availability at times of high demand for electricity. We have considered the possibility that a relationship does exist, and have assessed its impact.”

Energy Minister Andrea Leadsom said: “Our number one priority is to ensure that hardworking families and businesses have access to secure, affordable energy supplies they can rely on.

“In the short term, we have put measures in place to meet sudden increases in demand. In the longer term, we are investing in infrastructure and sensible policies to improve energy security.”
The Telegraph

turbine-collapse-germany1

Wind Industry Shills want More Money Wasted on Useless Wind Energy…Aussies say NO!

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Adam Creighton: Labor’s Ludicrous Wind Power Policy to Squander more than $100 Billion

July 27, 2015 by

Money Wasted

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In Sunday’s post, we detailed Labor’s descent into wind power madness – with its impossible push for a 50% renewable energy target.

One of the immediate responses has come from the press-pack; who have now turned on the great wind power fraud with a vengeance.

Journalists with a modicum of common sense have woken up to the fact that they’ve been lied to and taken for fools by the wind industry, its parasites and spruikers for years now.

The backlash amongst journos to Labor’s lurch to the infantile left, has caused an ‘awakening’, which has been swift and scathing. The Australian’s Adam Creighton – a lad with a solid economics background – is among those who have caught on to the scale and scope of the fraud.

In this thumping little piece, Adam slams “rent-seeking global turbine manufacturers” – which we take to mean struggling Danish fan maker, Vestas – and otherwise clobbers the pointlessness and insane cost of trying to rely on a power generation source that means future power “supply would depend on the weather” – rather than on that silly old economic chestnut: power consumers’ actual ‘demand’. Over to Adam.

Labor’s renewable energy target policy would waste $100bn
The Australian
Adam Creighton
24 July 2015

To make sure we have enough electricity over the next 15 years we can either spend $100 billion on new generating capacity, or we can spend next to nothing.

Both strategies will meet our electricity needs. Labor has decided the former makes a lot more sense, given its new policy to require 50 per cent of electricity to be generated by renewable energy by 2030. In practice this would require tripling the Renewable Energy Target to about 100 terawatt hours by 2030.

This is bizarre policy, not least because Labor agreed with the government to lower the RET to 33 by 2020, only last month. It reflects an almost religious and increasingly pervasive devotion to wind and solar power, whatever the cost.

Hiking the RET so dramatically would divert massive resources into construction of unreliable and costly generating capacity with limited environmental benefits.

ACIL-Allen reckons the cost of new wind, geothermal and solar capacity would come to about $100bn. The extra 11,000 wind turbines alone — 10 times the present number — would cost $65bn.

This is money that could have been used for projects that don’t require government compulsion to make them viable. Or it could have used to research ways to curb carbon emissions rather than enrich rent-seeking global turbine manufacturers.

Australia doesn’t need to invest in any new electricity supply; spending billions to get zero extra output is economic vandalism. In fact, electricity demand has been steadily falling (from 198 TwH in 2009 to 184 in 2014) because of higher network prices, our dwindling industrial base and popular energy-efficiency initiatives.

Current estimates see modest increases to 2030, which could be accommodated by existing capacity. Gas and coal-fired power stations are already being mothballed or closed, Alinta’s Port Augusta plants being recent examples.

Yet an axis of ignorance and self-interest is trying to argue Labor’s 50 per cent mandate will ultimately lower prices for households and create jobs. They seized on initial modelling by Frontier Economics this week that showed typical electricity bills under Labor’s plan would fall by $30 a year from 2016 to 2022 and then rise by $4 a year will 2030.

This occurs because existing fossil-fuel generators are assumed to bear heavy losses. The policy-induced glut of new supply pushes wholesale electricity prices down (especially in a market where demand was falling anyway), in some cases by more than the cost of the renewable energy certificates that the RET compels retailers to buy. The RET, as the government’s 2014 review found, “transfers wealth from electricity consumers and other participants in the electricity market to renewable generators”.

Existing generators might put up with this for a while — shutting a coal power station can cost more than running it at a loss — but in the longer run Alfred Marshal’s basic principle that the prices we pay for goods and services must ultimately cover their costs will begin to kick in.

“We might see a serious backlash from consumers in the medium to long run as fossil fuel generators leave the market, and retail costs start to reflect the cost and fundamentals of renewable energy,” says Tony Wood, an impartial energy expert at the Grattan Institute.

Consider a 100 per cent RET. Without base-load, conventional power sources — be they nuclear, coal or gas — supply would depend on the weather, and prices would reflect the far greater actual costs of production.

Large-scale wind and solar-powered electricity is two to four times more expensive than coal-power electricity, a discrepancy that could grow if the sunniest and windiest sites have been used up already. Whenever in doubt, ask: if renewable energy were so much more efficient and cost-effective than fossil fuels, why do we need to force people to buy it, by law?

Of course, wind and sunshine are free, so the marginal costs of renewable energy can be lower than those for fossil fuels once the turbines and solar grids are built. But it is irrational to ignore their upfront costs and junk perfectly satisfactory power stations unless other benefits were truly massive.

But they aren’t. Yes, the RET will create jobs, but so would deliberately complicating the tax system and hiring 10,000 public servants to enforce it.

Furthermore, the RET, along with the government’s Emissions Reduction Fund, is a terribly inefficient way to reduce greenhouse emissions. Large-scale solar, for instance, does so at about $200 a tonne or 10 times the cost of a simple carbon tax or emissions trading scheme, which both Labor and Coalition now spurn. Wind is about $100 a tonne.

Surely $100bn could be better spent on developing Australia’s rich uranium reserves to create a base-load power industry that can replace fossil fuel generators when they naturally expire.

But when renewable energy is seen as a religion, the case is far stronger. Certain religious observances might appear irrational but if they make people happy they serve a valid purpose. This is the best argument for a $65bn wind turbine building program.
The Australian

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A very solid wrap-up from Adam – who, based on that effort, is likely to end up in STT’s Hall of Fame. However, Adam needs to drill a little deeper on the true costs of the greatest economic and environmental fraud of all time; and – given his apparent antipathy to the wind power rort – we fully expect him to.

As we detailed in Sunday’s post, contrary to Matt Harris’ musings, the impact of momentary spurts of wind power on power prices is limited to the dispatch price (when the wind is actually blowing).

When the wind is blowing – the impact on retail prices (the price that troubles households and businesses) has retailers paying up to $120 per MWh (AGL pays $112) for every MWh of wind power dispatched to the grid – irrespective of the dispatch or wholesale price – which at night time will often be close to – or less than – zero. The rates retailers pay are set by long-term Power Purchase Agreements.

Wind power outfits steadfastly refuse to disclose their PPAs, for obvious political reasons. Infigen and the like aren’t going to win many hearts and minds if they revealed the fact that – in order to remain profitable over the long-term – they need a guaranteed price of around 4 times the average wholesale price of $35 – which doesn’t quite gel with their PR spruiker’s endless nonsense about the ‘wind being free‘.

The other critical detail that Adam needs to expand on, is the actual operating costs of wind turbines – such as operating and maintenance costs (recurring and increasing over time as these things grind their way to a halt): costs that – at $25 per MWh for every MWh dispatched – compare, not so favourably, with the ability of Victorian coal fired power generators to profitably deliver power to the grid, at less than $25 per MWh.

The operation of PPAs and their effect on retail power prices is covered in detail here – as is the actual operating costs of turbines:

When will the Wind Industry Stop Lying?

Australia’s Most Notorious Wind Power Outfit – Infigen – says “Move Over Pinocchio, Here We Come”

Then there’s the way in which the REC Subsidy paid to wind power outfits operates as an additive tax on all Australian power consumers – under the current LRET – a figure that runs to more than $45 billion:

Out to Save their Wind Industry Mates, Macfarlane & Hunt Lock-in $46 billion LRET Retail Power Tax

The other misconception – arising from guff pitched up by Tony Wood from the Grattan Institute – is that increasing wind power capacity will see “fossil fuel generators leave the market”. In terms of the fossil fuel generating capacity required to meet total consumer demand – no it won’t.

Fossil fuel generators – with a capacity at least equal to 100% of any installed wind power capacity – will be required to be available and online as ‘spinning reserve’ – 100% of the time – to account for total (and totally) unpredictable collapses in wind power output.

It does not matter whether there are 2,000, 5,000 or 10,000 turbines spread out across the Eastern Grid, as a natural, meteorological phenomenon the wind will stop blowing across that entire area, such that wind power output will drop to a doughnut hundreds of times every year. And that’s a FACT:

The Wind Power Fraud (in pictures): Part 2 – The Whole Eastern Grid Debacle

June 2015 National

The cost of building and maintaining – what is now referred to as ‘redundant’ capacity – essential to provide back-up ‘cover’ for a further 11,000 3MW turbines – would be astronomical:

Lessons from Germany’s Wind Power Disaster

Not to mention the need to pay fossil fuel generators millions upon millions of dollars in ‘capacity payments’ to ensure sufficient ‘spinning reserve’ and/or fast start up peaking power plants such as Open Cycle Gas Turbines and diesel generators to cover wind power output collapses, almost every day:

Power Punters to Pay Double for Wind Power “FAILS” – REAL Power Generators Paid to Cover Wind Power Fraud

Labor’s latest move has simply magnified the costs of the current LRET debacle by a factor of two or more. However, with journalists like Adam Creighton on the trail it won’t be long before Australians work out just why their power bills are going through the roof, now. And when they do, it will be a matter of when, not if, the LRET policy meets its political doom.

CPI and electricity

Wind Scam Turning Germany into an Energy Poverty Country!

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Germany’s Wind Power Chaos to Leave them Freezing in the Dark

July 25, 2015 by gs

transformer

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The Germans are rueing the day the bought into the great wind power fraud.

The Germans went into wind power harder and faster than anyone else – and the cost of doing so is catching up with a vengeance. The subsidies have been colossal, the impacts on the electricity market chaotic and – contrary to the environmental purpose of the policy – CO2 emissions are rising fast: if “saving” the planet is – as we are repeatedly told – all about reducing man-made emissions of an odourless, colourless, naturally occurring trace gas, essential for all life on earth – then German energy/environmental policy has manifestly failed (see our post here).

Some 800,000 German homes have been disconnected from the grid – victims of what is euphemistically called “fuel poverty”. In response, Germans have picked up their axes and have headed to their forests in order to improve their sense of energy security – although foresters apparently take the view that this self-help measure is nothing more than blatant timber theft (see our post here).

German manufacturers – and other energy intensive industries – faced with escalating power bills are packing up and heading to the USA – where power prices are 1/3 of Germany’s (see our posts here and hereand here). And the “green” dream of creating thousands of jobs in the wind industry has turned out to be just that: a dream (see our post here).

The ‘gloss’ has well and truly worn off Germany’s wind power ‘Supermodel’ status – as communities fight back against having thousands of these things speared into their backyards – and for all the same reasons communities are fighting back all over the world; those with a head for numbers have called the fraud for what it is; and medicos have called for a complete moratorium on the construction of new wind farms in an effort to protect their patients and quarantine their professional liability:

Germany’s Wind Power ‘Dream’ Becomes a Living Nightmare

German Medicos Demand Moratorium on New Wind Farms

And, on a practical level, those in charge of Germany’s power grid have stepped up calls for an end to the lunacy of trying to absorb a wholly weather dependent generation source into what was never designed to deal with the chaos presented on a daily basis:

Germany’s Wind Power Debacle Escalates: Nation’s Grid on the Brink of Collapse

Electricity grids were designed as – funnily enough – ‘SYSTEMS’ – that can only operate around tolerances of a few volts and hertz, either way. Their designers never had the chaos of wind power generation in mind – with 60% of its installed capacity being thrown at the grid for a few hours when the wind blows and – without meaningful warning – having the whole lot disappear in a heartbeat.

13 June SA

[Now, that’s what STT means by ‘disappearing in a heartbeat’. Entire South Australian Grid – 13 June 2015 – from 9am to 3pm – a collapse of 750MW – 800MW to 50MW – or an output drop of 94% – at a rate of 125MW/hour]

That kind of chaos is set to have calamitous consequences for the entire grid – and every living thing connected to it. Here’s NoTricksZone with a no-punches-pulled take on Germany’s unscheduled return to the very Dark Ages.

“Alarming Results” From Fraunhofer Institute Study On Grid Overloading From Wind, Solar Power … Crippled Cities
Pierre Gosselin
NoTricksZone
15 July 2015

As Germany piles on more sporadic energy from wind and solar into its power grid, stability concerns are growing.

Increasingly volatile energies like wind and sun are turning out to be more of an expensive nuisance rather than a benefit.

Researchers at the Germany-based Fraunhofer-Instituts für Optronik, Systemtechnik und Bildauswertung, Institutsteil Angewandte Systemtechnik (IOSB-AST) have studied the risk of grid overloads caused by renewable energies at the community level, the online Ostthüringer Zeitung (OTZ) writes here.

The result, reports the OTZ:

Already in just a few years power will have to be stored locally as well. […] And the answers in their study are, depending on the perspective, thoroughly alarming or spurring for policymaking and the economy.

According to the OTZ, a team of researchers led by Peter Bretschneider at the Fraunhofer’s IOSB-AST conducted a 3-year study, where they literally built a statistical mock-up city of 30,000 that included a downtown, residential areas, commercial district, solar installations and wind parks. “A total of 1847 residential and business buildings that included everything from grandma’s little house to office complex for public officials.”

And so that the mock-up city simulates what is typical today in Germany, it also had everything a town would expect to have with the current German feed-in act:

4456 ‘grid elements’, i.e. power lines, transformers, large points of consumption and feed-in systems, foremost photovoltaics on the roofs.”

Even the homes were provided with the thermal insulation that they are expected to have later on.

The OTZ continues:

Next the Fraunhofer scientists electrified their simulated city. Then using meteorological data they allowed the sun to rise and set, the wind to blow, the temperatures to change – just like in real life.”

Next they extrapolated outwards to the expected conditions of the year 2018 and 2023, leaving the local power grid unchanged and allowing more wind and solar energy to come online as expected from the provisions of the feed-in act. How did the city’s power grid fare? The OTZ tells us the shocking results, and they aren’t pretty:

Already today in the simulated city one of the 14 network nodes gets sporadically overloaded. In 2018 the impacted transformer comes under serious stress 22 days a year, and so does another transformer. Five years later three nodes are impacted by long-term frequent back-feeding of surplus solar energy in the medium-voltage grid. At least one cable in the area exceeds ‘the limits of thermal loading’. […]  ‘Yes, a transformer would be glowing – and the cable would go up in smoke,’ system engineer Sebastian Flemming explains the results in layman’s terms.

The OTZ asks what this all means for the citizens? Flemming responds: “Blackout, for the entire city.”

In the wintertime this would be most inconvenient, and for some possibly even fatal.

Flemming adds that even if a blackout were averted, the wild frequency fluctuations in the grid would have “grave consequences” for many electrical appliances and systems. The OTZ writes:

None of today’s productions systems in the economy could function under such fluctuations, especially everything that is computer-controlled.

In other words, it would not even take a blackout to cripple a city.

The OTZ then asks what can be done with the surplus electrical energy that will surely result from the wind and sun. Here once again the financially and technically unfeasible storage systems get brought up. Another solution mentioned is the conversion of the electricity into heat for supplying warmth to homes.

But the online OTZ daily writes that solutions appear to be a ways off, and so it warns:

Time is running out: According to the study, beginning in 2018, the first transformers are threatened with prolonged overloading.”

Do these findings of the Fraunhofer Institute surprise us? Not at all. It’s been known for a long time that the feed-in of solar and wind power leads to crazy, uncontrolled power surges in the grid. Supply stability remains the glaring problem that too many among us continue to deny.

Prepare for blackouts!
NoTricksZone

studying candle

Storing Wind Energy is another Unaffordable Scam…

/ 1957chev / 2 Comments

The Patent Nonsense of ‘Storing’ Wind Power Smashed

July 23, 2015 by

giant battery 2

****

The wind industry is the perpetual infant of power generation: always looking for the subsidies to last that little bit longer; always promising to improve its performance; always claiming it will outdo hydro, coal and gas – provided, of course, that the subsidies keep flowing. STT for one thinks the wind industry has had ample time to grow up and stand on its own two feet.

Like the brat that it is, the wind industry can’t be told what to do and, especially, won’t ever respond to demands from power users about when its product should be delivered.

output vs demand

It’s quite happy to produce plenty of power when it’s not needed at night time; and much less during the day, when it is (as seen in the graph above); and often, none at all during periods of peak demand: as seen in our posts from earlier this week:

The Wind Power Fraud (in pictures): Part 1 – the South Australian Wind Farm Fiasco

The Wind Power Fraud (in pictures): Part 2 – The Whole Eastern Grid Debacle

When challenged about its consistent failures to match output with demand, the wind industry and its parasites respond by mumbling about “battery technology improving”.

The pitch is that – one day “soon” – there will batteries big enough and cheap enough to allow huge volumes of wind power produced when it’s not needed, to be stored for the occasions when it is. That way, the “variable” output from wind farms could be delivered when there might just be a market for it.

Of course, the pitch is made so the subsidies keep flowing to allow an endless sea of giant fans to be erected now – in order to take advantage of the (so far, elusive) storage technology that’s just over the “horizon”. Except that the “soon” is more like light-years and the “horizon” is a mirage.

Even if a technology was invented (STT likens it to the chances of finding a perpetual motion machine or alchemy turning lead into gold) to store large volumes of the electricity output (in bulk) from all of the wind farms connected to the Eastern Grid, say (which now have a notional capacity of 3,669 MW) – the economic cost would be astronomical – and readily eclipse the value of the power produced. Not that the wind industry has ever made any economic sense. We visited the topic a while ago:

The Economic Storage of Wind Power is a Pipe-Dream

And, with the wind industry’s PR spinners becoming more desperate and silly by the day – in a ‘we love kicking a mangy dog when it’s down’ kind of way, we thought it high time to revisit – and launch a final assault on – the greentards’ last redoubt.

Their pitch is that cost effective, ‘grid scale’ electricity storage will overcome the chaotic and occasional delivery of wind power, to have it stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the ‘big boys’ – coal, gas, hydro and nuclear.

The following article details the INSANE cost of attempting to store electricity in bulk quantities. In just one example, the paper explains how with the “simple” addition of a US$14.4 million, 16.8 MWh Lithium-Ion battery, the crazy, intermittent output of a 30% capacity factor, US$3.5 million, 2MW wind turbine can be turned into a constant 0.6MW output (2MW x 30%) combination – for trifling US$18 million. That works out to a staggering US$30 million per MW of wanna-be “base load” power – with its major component (the battery) having a useful life of around 10 years.

As it will never amount to a meaningful power source, wind power is simply an energy and economic nonsense. The fact that the electricity it produces (usually, when no-one needs it) can’t be stored, dooms wind power to the Dark Ages – from whence it came.

Intermittent grid storage
Climate Etc
Rud Istvan
1 July 2015

From the utility grid perspective, a fundamental problem with wind and solar is intermittency.

In the US, wind has a median capacity factor of 31%. In California’s Mohave Desert, solar PV has a capacity factor of 23%. To make up the electricity supply difference during the rest of the time, grids must either add otherwise unnecessary backup generation, or flex base load generation (dropping below optimum output so the grid can accept the intermittent renewable input). At a minimum, flexing results in costly capital inefficiency. Otherwise unnecessary backup generation is even more costly.

The higher the renewable penetration, the greater this intermittency burden becomes. For Texas’ ERCOT grid with 10.6% wind, the additionalcosts are ~$19/MWh for generation plus ~$6.50/MWh for transmission. It is now so expensive in Germany (26% renewable generation) that its largest utility, RWE, took a €3.3 billion impairment charge 1Q2014. The second largest, E.ON, took a €4.5 billion impairment charge 4Q2014, and announced it was spinning its conventional generating assets off into anunprofitable separate company. E.ON will also be shutting Irsching 4 and 5, large efficient CCGT units completed in 2010 and 2011! Irsching simply is not viable without being compensated for the forced Energiewende flexing it endures, while selling its electricity against the subsidized renewables with which it is also forced to compete.

So renewables advocates hope for major advances in grid storage to offset wind and solar intermittency. This guest post surveys what might be possible in the future given what is presently known. The focus is on utility scale, but takes an irresistible detour through TESLA’s newly hyped residential Powerwall. Sandia has a more detailed (albeit somewhat dated and hopefully slanted) utility storage analysis than this post, for CE denizens interested in digging deeper.

There are in principle only five ways that generated electricity can be subsequently ‘stored’: potential energy (e.g. pumped hydro), kinetic energy (e.g. flywheels), electrostatic energy (capacitors), electrochemical energy (batteries), and chemical energy (e.g. water hydrolysis). Anyone inventing another is in line for an automatic Nobel Prize (probably two, physics or chemistry plus peace).

Pumped hydro storage (PHS)

Potential energy in the form of pumped hydro storage (PHS, essentially reversible hydroelectricity) is >99% of existing grid storage worldwide.The figure is from EPRI 2011. EPRI has not updated their overall grid storage analysis, but did estimate that ~140,000MW of PHS was installed by YE2014.

400-1

All that a grid needs are upper and lower water ‘reservoirs’ in ‘hilly’ terrain, and reversible hydroturbogenerators. It is possible to excavate a lower reservoir deep underground, but at much higher cost. One such facility is proposed for Holland. O-PEC would be 1400MW x 6 hours for €1.8 billion, using a 1400m (!) hydrostatic head to minimize water and underground chamber volume.

400-2

Round trip efficiency is high at over 80%, and facility life is long at much over 40 years. The LCOE depends on facility size, cost, and hydrostatic head, ranging from as low as ~$85/MWh (EIA) to as high as ~$150 to $200/MWh (Sandia). PHS has so far been used mainly for peak load shifting. Off peak base load is used to pump water into the upper reservoir, which then generates back into the lower during peak load. This allows a larger grid proportion of low cost base load generating at optimal output 24/7 than would otherwise be possible. Where grid/terrain possible, PHS can also support renewable intermittency as already done somewhat in southern Germany, Austria and Switzerland (the Alps).

PHS always pays on a grid system basis if suitable affordable terrain is available. Many places favorable for wind (low relief Iowa, Denmark, northern Germany) or solar (low relief Mohave Desert) are distinctly NOT favorable—even though PHS does not have to be co-located, just very strongly grid intertied.

Developed world grids have already taken most of the advantage they can of PHS. California is an odd exception.

Kinetic Energy Storage

Kinetic energy storage is also extensively used on the grid, in the form of synchronous condensers for reactive power compensation (aka volt ampreactive, VAR). These are essentially unpowered generators spinning on grid. Some old decommissioned coal generating plants repurpose the old generators as ‘new’ synchronous condensers. Rotors may weigh hundreds of tons and spin at up to 3600 rpm, but still only store enough kinetic energy to provide transient voltage/frequency regulation (VAR). Downtown Tokyo alone uses six Toshiba purpose built 200MVARs. The human figure illustrates the enormous size/mass of grid scale kinetic storage machines. They are still grossly insufficient for bulk intermittent renewable storage.

400-3
Beacon Power enhanced kinetic energy density by using grid-coupled carbon fiber flywheels spinning at 16000 rpm (reaching Mach 2, requiring they spin in a vacuum). Beacon’s first (subsidized) 20MW x 0.25hour facility comprised 200 flywheels and cost $4800/MWh. Its purpose was frequency regulation (VAR), not bulk energy storage. This facility is the flywheel capacity in this post’s initial EPRI energy storage figure.

400-4

That is far too little energy for bulk utility wind or solar intermittency. To back up a single 2MW wind turbine at 30% capacity factor would require ([1-0.3]*24 hours / 20MW/ 2MW * 0.25hour) 6.7 of the pictured facilities.

Electrostatic storage

Electrostatic storage in capacitors is ubiquitous. There are large capacitor banks for reactive power compensation (VAR) on all utility grids.

400-5
Super capacitors have the highest energy density of any capacitor type, an order of magnitude more than the next best kind. Supercaps plus power electronics have created a rapidly growing new utility device class in the past decade, static compensators (statcoms). These substitute for smaller synchronous condensers; ABB’s statcoms come in sizes up to 30MVAR. Their advantage is no moving parts/maintenance. Like synchronous condensors and capacitors, statcoms store far too little energy for bulk wind and solar needs.

Electrochemical batteries

Electrochemical batteries presently have limited use on the grid. Rechargeable battery electricity is stored in some reversible electrochemical reaction. Familiar lead acid (PbA) electrochemistry is sponge lead/lead dioxide electrodes creating/removing lead sulfate, with sulfuric acid electrolyte conducting the needed sulfate ions. Which is also why deeply cycled PbA batteries have inherently short cycle life unsuited to utility storage. Cycling grows ever-larger and increasingly insoluble lead sulphate grains (sulfation), while the growing/shrinking lead sulfate in the electrodes eventually causes them to disintegrate from mechanical stress. Xtreme Power designed an industrial/utility PbA capable of 650 cycles to 80% discharge, which would last less than two years supporting solar. Xtreme delivered (to utilities) about 35MW at about $1000/MWh before going bankrupt. Xtreme is the PbA in the initial figure.

There are many reversible electrochemistries. Commercial ones include PbA, Nickel Metal Hydride (NMH, in most hybrid autos), lithium ion (LiIon, ubiquitous in portable electronics and electric vehicles), and sodium sulfur (NaS). There are several ‘experimental’ chemistries with one or more as yet unresolved issues. These include lower cost lead carbon (PbC, cycle life), lower cost and higher energy zinc air (cycle life, safety), lower cost and higher energy sodium ion (cycle life), higher energy lithium air (cycle life, safety), higher energy solid state LiIon (SSLiIon, cost, cycle life), and higher energy lithium sulfur (LiS, cycle life). Furthest along seem to be PbC, SSLiIon, and LiS (the links are illustrative, not exhaustive of all the entities working on these electrochemistries).

There is a lot of uninformed MSM reporting on battery progress, often based on hyped lab PR (most recently Harvard’s rhubarb battery, below). Electrochemistry has been known since Alessandro Volta’s 1799 stack of zinc, brine soaked paper separator, and copper twitched a frog’s leg. Sticking zinc and copper into a lemon still works—but not for any practical application. Many, many $billions have been spent on battery R&D over the past century. Progress remains a very slow slog. It is beyond unlikely that any fundamental electrochemical miracles remain unrevealed.

There are two basic battery design concepts. The familiar one (like PbA, NMH, and LiIon) stores electricity in the electrodes. This is not a problem for portable electronic tiny energy storage needs. It is a big problem for utility bulk storage requiring a lot of expensive electrode. A123 Systems delivered one 20MWh LiIon system (10 of the imaged containers) that cost (based on its federal loan guarantee) $17.1 million. This facility is the LiIon capacity in the initial figure.

400-6

Backing up a single ~$3.5 million 2MW wind turbine at 30% capacity factor would require 8.4 of these containers at a cost of ~$14.4 million. They would be purchased from NEC Energy Solutions; A123 went bankrupt. Its assets were sold to the Chinese at a $119 million loss to US taxpayers who gave A123 grants and loan guarantees. The Chinese sold the utility portion to NEC. NEC has a new order for 3 20MW installations for the PJM grid. Like Beacon’s flywheels, these are for frequency regulation, not bulk renewable energy storage. In that application (which does not deeply discharge the batteries), NEC says they last 20 years—still insufficient for wind or solar without replacement.

If energy density can be increased, then the amount of electrode per unit electricity can be decreased proportionately. LiIon’s theoretical limit is 1015 Wh/liter. The Panasonic cells Tesla uses (below) are about 620 Wh/L (cells, not the Powerwall battery at ~350 Wh/L with liquid cooling). Panasonic produces more advanced (and more expensive, shorter lived) smartphone cells that approach 800 Wh/L. There will undoubtedly be some further improvement in LiIon energy density, but nothing like what has already been achieved.

The main ‘electrode concept’ utility battery is NaS. Several hundred MW are already on grid, as the first figure shows. These operate at 350C (and must be kept at that temperature continuously), have a 15-year life (significantly longer than deeply discharged LiIon at ~10 years per Tesla), and have a round trip efficiency of 75%. They are used in special grid distribution situations, for example to support remote peak loads where a small peaker or a beefed up transmission line would be even more expensive than NaS. California’s PGE just installed a 4MW x 6hour NaS facility from Japan’s NGK. It cost $18 million.   

400-7
At 30% capacity factor, about (16.8 hr *2MW/[4Mw x 6hr = 24MWh NaS] /0.75 efficiency) 1.9 of these facilities would be needed to back up a single2MW wind turbine. NaS would cost $34 million to back up one $3.5 million turbine. And it would have to be replaced after 15 years to support the turbine’s ~25 year life. NaS is not commercially feasible for renewable bulk electricity storage.

The other class of battery design stores electricity in the electrolyte, and only uses smallish expensive electrodes to put it in and take it out as electrolyte is pumped through the electrodes. In such ‘redox flow’ batteries, the electrolyte can be stored in arbitrarily large tanks. This theoretically solves the grid scale electrode cost problem. And also part of the battery cycle life problem, since the electrolyte and/or electrodes can be separately replaced.

There are several redox flow chemistries in development. Some are expensive and corrosive, like the vanadium redox battery (VRB). The most recently hyped experimental system uses inexpensive organic quinones similar to those found in rhubarb. No word yet from Harvard on round trip efficiency, or how long their ‘breakthrough’ rhubarb flow battery might last.

One seemingly promising type (since a commercial unit exists) uses relatively (compared to vanadium) inexpensive iron/chromium, championed by 2008 California startup EnerVault. Their first ‘commercial’ flow battery (250kw x 4hour = 1MWh) was installed in 2014 to support a solar powered 250kw irrigation pump in Turlock, California. It has a round trip efficiency of 60%. To back up a single 2MW wind turbine at 30% capacity factor would require (16.8 hours *2MW/ 1MWh/0.6 efficiency) 56of the pictured EnerVault facilities. Or requires tanks, electrodes, and pumps that are 56x bigger than pictured.

400-8
The facility cost $9.5 million, $4.7 million from a US grant. EnerVault told EPRI and DoE (as part of the grant process) that it expected to be ~$350/kWh in volume production. Backing up a single $3.5million 2MW turbine might cost ‘only’ $12 million in the future. The useful lifetime is TBD; EnerVault says >20 years. But EnerVault also says the pumps last “thousands of hours” before needing replacement. That could mean yearly—and probably does. On April 14, 2015 EnerVault announced it was ‘restructuring’ (laying off most employees) and ‘seeking new owners’. Existing investors including Japan’s Mitsui, French oil company TOTAL, and 3M declined to put in more money. EnerVault has failed.

The foregoing examples illustrate the immensity of the utility bulk storage challenge. No foreseeable battery solution overcomes this enormous challenge.

Distributed grid storage

There has been much renewables discussion of ‘distributed’ grid storage. Put many smaller batteries at residential or commercial locations, in the hope that manufacturing volumes would provide cost economies of scale. Thus the MSM excitement Elon Musk created with his Tesla Gigafactoryand the Powerwall. The 7kWh daily cycle unit (complementing rooftop PV) has a guaranteed 10 year life at 92% round trip efficiency for $3000, excluding installation and inverter.

Whether Powerwall makes any sense is a less exciting question, which Musk’s fawning MSM did not ask. Palo Alto’s approximate LCOE for rooftop PV is ~$0.155/kWh for a 5kWDC system before subsidies, according to Palo Alto itself. To charge a single Powerwall while still using the original PV as before, about (7kWh/5.4 ‘sun hours’ per NREL /0.92 efficiency) 1.4 kW of additional PV would have to be installed. Using Palo Alto’s ‘official’ estimate, that is an additional PV cost of about $8400 (including the inverter Tesla does not supply). Total cost $11,400 for one Powerwall is no problem—if you can afford to live in Palo Alto and install PV there in the first place. The city says its average home consumes about 1000 kWh/month or (1000/~30.5) 32.8kWh/day. A 6.4kW PV plus one Powerwall will not take an average Palo Alto home off grid—it is (32.8-12) 20.8kWh short. It would take 4 Powerwalls (plus their additional PV) to go off grid. Not enough dollars or roof to make that work.

Being a little bit Palo Alto/Tesla green comes at a large cost. The 10-year, 0.065 discount rate LCOE of single Powerwall is $0.118/kWh. To that must be added the LCOE of the extra charging PV, adjusted for Powerwall efficiency. According to Palo Alto, that is (~0.155/0.92) $0.168/kWh, for total Powerwall LCOE of $0.286/kWh. The residential cost of electricity in California (March 2015) averaged ~$0.17/kWh. Powerwall is a bad deal, costing almost twice what California’s residential grid electricity does. (Tesla cars are a similarly bad deal.)

Chemical storage

Chemical energy storage involves electricity reversibly converted into simple chemical energy (some fuel). Two chemistries have been seriously proposed: hydrogen and methane.

Hydrogen

Hydrogen can certainly be hydrolyzed from water. And the necessary electricity can certainly come from intermittent renewables. The most efficient way to convert hydrogen back to electricity at grid scale would be a PEM fuel cell or an SOFC. The math can be done using Ballard’s 1MW PEM, since a few have actually been sold as demos. Ignore the technical difficulties of bulk hydrogen storage, which the following methane alternative ‘solves’.

The theoretical efficiency of hydrolysis is ~88%. About 4% of commercial hydrogen is made this way today, with real efficiencies of ~75%. EERE says PEM fuel cells can be 60% efficient. But that is also theoretical. Ballard’sreal 1 MW ClearGen® is 40±2% efficient, with a lifetime of ~15 years (similar to NaS). The round trip efficiency of a hydrogen electricity storage system would be about (0.75 * 0.4) 30%. For a utility, that is awful.

The electricity to be stored comes mainly from otherwise flexed base load generation, with chemical storage buffering renewable intermittency no different than PHS buffers peaks. The energy cost alone would be about ($57/MWh baseload / 0.3 efficiency) $190/MWh. Ballard’s ClearGen® costs about $10 million/MW (including inverter, transformer, and installation).That calculates a capital LCOE of about $114/MWh. Adding hydrolysis and H2 storage, the system LCOE is >>$304/MWh. It is simply not commercially viable–by nearly an order of magnitude. Before solving the hydrogen storage problem.

Methane

Or, hydrogen from electrolysis could be reacted with CO2 over nickel catalysts to produce methane. Methanation is significantly exothermic, although up to half of the resulting ~20% ‘waste’ heat could be reused (e.g. heating input feedstock, since the catalysis works between 200C and 550C). A number of lab scale reactors plus at least one pilot facility have been built, with methane yields from ~70% for one pass to ~95% for three. Solves the hydrogen storage problem. The resulting synthetic methane can be stored and used like natural gas from any other source (e.g. in flexible CCGT with 58-61% efficiency). Input CO2 could theoretically be obtained from fossil fuel carbon capture (without sequestration), a process with 20-30% parasitic energy loads.

Methane round trip energy efficiency would be about 0.75 (hydrolysis) * 0.95 (catalysis yield) * 0.9 (net [half] methanation exothermic loss) * 0.8 (minimum CC parasitic load) * 0.6 (flexed CCGT) or ~31%— no better than hydrogen alone, after all the chemical complications. Methane storage avoids the technical hydrogen storage challenge, but at the expense of much additional chemical plant capital, operations, and maintenance cost. It worsens the chemical storage economics.

Conclusions

Most renewables advocates don’t appreciate the scope and scale of electricity grids, the difficulties intermittency creates, and the technical/ commercial inadequacies of electricity storage technologies other than PHS.

Utilities already utilize four out of five forms of energy storage wherever they make sense. Potential energy is ubiquitous pumped storage. Kinetic energy is ubiquitous synchronous condensers. Electrostatic energy is ubiquitous capacitors and statcoms. Conventional electrochemical batteries are not practical except in special situations, and probably never will be. Flow batteries may improve on conventional batteries somewhat, but are still far from feasible for large-scale bulk wind and solar storage needs. Chemical storage is even worse than batteries because of its inherently greater thermodynamic inefficiency.

It is very unlikely that any grid storage solution (other than PHS where feasible) could ever practically cover the intermittency of high penetration utility scale wind and solar. Utility voices (like RWE and E.ON) charged with making electricity grids work seamlessly and reliably despite ever increasing renewable intermittency burdens are only starting to be heard. Those voices are very negative. It may not be until some grid goes dark because of intermittency (as increasingly uneconomic flexed conventional generation is shut in Germany and UK) that the general public will understand. Germany, UK, and California seem determined to run this unfortunate experiment for the rest of us. One or more appear likely to succeed soon in experimentally proving the grid instability ‘blackout’ hypothesis. The question is mainly when, not if.
Climate Etc.

studying candle

Wynne Protects her Granddaughters “Future”, at the Expense of My Child’s Well-Being, NOW!

/ 1957chev / 1 Comment

An Ill-Wind in Ontario

78808847Despite rising public complaints about adverse health effects from industrial wind turbines, thousands continue to be erected across the province.

Environmentalists often talk about people whose lives are ruined by man-made global warming.

But they never mention the lives that are devastated by misguided climate change policy.

There is no better example than the debilitating human health impacts of the hundreds of thousands of industrial wind turbines (IWTs) that are being erected around the world to supposedly mitigate climate change.

In “Adverse health effects of industrial wind turbines,” a 2013 paper in the magazine of the College of Family Physicians of Canada, Dr. Roy D. Jeffery, Carmen Krogh, and Brett Horner explained, “People who live or work in close proximity to IWTs have experienced symptoms that include decreased quality of life, annoyance, stress, sleep disturbance, headache, anxiety, depression, and cognitive dysfunction.”

“The problem is not just cyclical audible noise keeping people awake but also low frequency infrasound which can travel many kilometres,” notes Dufferin County-based Barb Ashbee, who says she was forced out of her Amaranth, Ontario home by the siting of IWTs too close to it.

“Infrasound goes right through walls,” said Ashbee, operator of the Wind Victims Ontario website. “It pummels your body.”

Tens of thousands of complaints have been received by governments around the world.

Sherri Lange, CEO of North American Platform Against Wind, said, “I have personally received hundreds of phone calls from distressed people who need to vacate their homes [because of IWTs].”

Lange contended governments try to not address the issue.

“It is my experience from talking to doctors, researchers and other high-level professionals, that governments seem to be (under the influenced of) the industry.”

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne promised her government would not force any of the 6,736 IWTs being erected by the province into “unwilling communities”.

To date, 90 communities have declared themselves as “Unwilling Hosts”, yet construction is underway, or planned, in many of these areas.

For example, in West Lincoln and surrounding regions, wind developers have received approval to install at least 77 three-Megawatt IWTs, each as tall as a 61-storey building, despite strong public objections.

Local resident Shellie Correia is particularly concerned.

Her 12-year-old son, Joey, has been diagnosed with Sensory Processing Disorder and it is crucial that he live in a quiet environment.

But now, as part of the Ontario government’s climate change plans, an IWT will be sited only 550 metres from his home, the closest “setback” allowed in Ontario for residents who do not sign lease agreements with wind companies.

The province, which cites a 2010 report from its Chief Medical Officer of Health that found no direct causal links between IWTs and adverse health effects, has claimed the province’s setbacks are “the most stringent in North America”.

In reality, most jurisdictions in Canada, the U.S., Australia, and Europe require greater setbacks. Two kilometres is commonplace.

As Correia explained in her January, 2015 presentation before the government’s Environmental Review Tribunal, “On top of the incessant, cyclical noise, there is light flicker, and infrasound. This is not something that my son will be able to tolerate.”

Correia is supported by her son’s pediatrician, Dr. Chrystella Calvert, a specialist in the care of children with developmental and mental health problems.

Calvert says, “I, as a ‘normal brain’ individual would not want this risk [of an IWT] to my mental health (or my children’s) in my neighbourhood.”

Like most governments, Ontario officials insist the adverse health effects of IWTs are minimal, citing various studies.

But there is much scientific evidence to the contrary and studies are lacking with regards to children.

Krogh, one of the authors of the report on health problems linked to IWTs that appeared in the magazine of The College of Family Physicians of Canada, wrote in a May 13, 2013 open communication to Canada’s health minister, “Vigilance and long-term surveillance systems regarding risks and adverse effects related to children are lacking. … This evaluation should take place before proceeding with additional approvals.”

But the approvals go ahead regardless.

As Correia notes, “Wynne speaks about ‘protecting’ her granddaughter’s future (in defending her government’s plan to introduce carbon pricing through cap-and-trade.) Why then, is it not important for her to protect my son, now?”

Tom Harris

— Tom Harris

Tom Harris is executive director of the International Climate Science Coalition and a policy advisor for environment policy at The Heartland Institute. He has 30 years’ experience working as a mechanical engineer and project manager, science and technology communications professional and media and science and technology advisor to a former Opposition Senior Environment Critic. For the past 10 years, Harris has been working intensively with a growing team of independent scientists and engineers to promote a sensible approach to a range of energy and environmental topics, climate change in particular. His main focus has been the highly controversial science underlying these issues. Along with Professor Bob Carter of James Cook University in Australia, Harris coordinated the open letter from 100 top climate experts to the Secretary General of United Nations during the Bali Climate Change Conference in December 2007.

As the Green Scam Implodes, the Wind Weasels Scream Louder!

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‘Greens’ Gamble on Your Future; while PM Stops CEFC from Laying Wind Power Bets

July 22, 2015 by

kenny-rogers-420x0

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A little while back, that great philosopher, Kenny Rogers spelt out the rules for Gamblers in clear and simple terms:

You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em,

Know when to walk away and know when to run.

You never count your money when you’re sittin’ at the table.

There’ll be time enough for countin’ when the dealin’s done.

That sound and sage advice is ignored in the breach by the wind industry, its parasites and spruikers.

Every time there’s a ‘little blow’ – and wind power output registers more than the usual piddling fraction of its ‘installed capacity’, there’s a flurry of Tweets and blog posts about the ‘monumental’ (but always ‘momentary’) energy effort. All laced with the kind of tear-filled joy that accompanies cheers for a disabled athlete, who’s just won Olympic Gold.

But, when it comes to cheering on the ‘disabled’ energy runner, wind power fans are always in breach of the Gambler’s 3rd rule, about counting their money while sittin’ at the table – they always count too loud and too soon.

And, just like the Gambler, the greentard is always quick and ready to tell you about their “wins”, but never about their “losses”.  When he’s down on his luck, the Gambler will happily lie to himself, friends and family about his failing fortunes – the greentard Gambler is no different.

In the last two posts (here and here) we popped up the some of the “track results” for wind power and, as laid out in dozens of pictures, its shameful ‘form’ would have had it “scratched” from the book, long ago – but for the gullible and naive (not to mention corrupt) among our political betters that control the field.

We’ll start with another example of how the “Gambling Bug” has displaced common sense, with greentards cock-a-hoop about “a single windy NIGHT in Denmark” – said to herald a ‘new dawn’ in our wind powered ‘future’.

GetUp! striving for an Australia where wind power meets 3am demand
Freedom Watch
Brett Hogan
14 July 2015

The hearts of climate change lobbyists were aflutter recently with news that wind farms had generated 140 per cent of Denmark’s electricity demand, and local advocates contrasting this with the Abbott Government’s supposed ‘war on wind’.

What this story is really saying is that in a country with a population the size of Victoria (around 5.6 million) and less than half the geographical area of Tasmania (at 43,000 square kilometres), wind power is able at 3am in the morning, when very few people are using electricity, to generate electricity in excess of demand.

Great work!

To get a sense of what 3am demand for electricity looks like, here it is this morning in Victoria:

400Energy_demand

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Denmark is of course famous for having the most expensive electricity prices in the world and enjoys the luxury of being close enough to Germany, Sweden and Norway to buy their excess electricity (in part supplied by significant nuclear and hydroelectric facilities) when the wind isn’t blowing.

Wind farms turn the economics of energy markets upside down. Traditional power plants, like any other commodity, generate a product (power) that is sold in a market competing with other providers, and charging a price that is set balancing demand and supply.

However, wind farms, which are typically only economical in the first place due to significant government subsidies, which often include fixed tariffs (so much for the free market) actually rob the market of price signals when the wind blows. It can destroy the economics of electricity providers that need to stay in the market as backup for the 70 per cent of the time that the wind doesn’t blow.

Every country needs cheap and affordable electricity to build and sustain a modern economy and for its people to enjoy quality of life.

Australia has a population of almost 24 million people spread over 7 million square kilometres with an electricity demand more than 6 times that of Denmark, and no neighbouring country’s electricity to fall back on. Denmark offers no lessons for Australia other than “Don’t do this.”

Chris Berg in The Drum today wrote about the history of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and its political genesis. The Abbott government was right to follow the lead of the United Kingdom and instruction to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to no longer invest in wind or small-scale solar facilities.
Freedom Watch

roulette-table-2

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Now, while the wind industry and its greentard-gamblers are ready to keep rolling the dice with our energy future, thankfully, the PM, Tony Abbott and his Vice-Squad, Treasurer “Smokin’” Joe Hockey and Mathias “The Terminator” Cormann have tipped the gaming tables and prevented the Clean Energy Finance Corporation from laying anymore high-risk bets, with taxpayers’ money. Here’s a little piece on the Vice-Squad’s raid.

There’s no ‘war on wind’, just MPs doing their job
Chris Berg
14 July 2015
The Drum

There are a lot of objectionable things in Australian politics, but Government ministers directing the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to stop funding new wind farm projects doesn’t rate, writes Chris Berg.

There was a lot of heat in the debate about the Clean Energy Finance Corporation over the weekend, but not much light.

On Sunday, Fairfax papers reported the Abbott Government had directed the CEFC to stop funding new wind farm projects.

Social media was livid. Tony Abbott was waging a “war on wind power”. How dare the Abbott Government presume to interfere with such a virtuous independent market program to tackle climate change?

That reaction was, to put it mildly, a load of nonsense. The Government’s direction to the CEFC is not unprecedented interference in an independent body. Nor is the CEFC a “market” mechanism. The CEFC is a government program whose funding policies are set by the executive.

Yes, the Coalition wants to abolish the CEFC outright. But it can’t. So the Government says it would rather the CEFC focus on funding innovation rather than established technology. There are a lot of objectionable things in Australian politics. This doesn’t rate.

The CEFC’s enabling legislation – which was written and introduced by the Gillard government and passed without Coalition support – allows the sitting government to do exactly what the Coalition is doing now. Asnoted in an explanatory memorandum authored by the Gillard government:

It is appropriate that the Government, as manager of the economy and owner of the Corporation, have a mechanism for articulating its broad expectations for how the Corporation’s funds will be invested and managed by the Board.

So each year the government is required to provide the CEFC with an investment mandate direction.

The memorandum specifically nominated “allocation of investments between different types of clean energy technologies” as one of the areas in which ministers might issue a direction.

What independence is provided by the CEFC Act is a requirement that ministerial directions not be contrary to the CEFC’s statutory obligations, and that ministers must not direct or prevent CEFC investments in specific companies. All fair enough.

With these provisions, the Gillard government gave itself the statutory leeway to direct the CEFC’s investment direction. If it didn’t want an Abbott Government to have the same leeway, it should have written the legislation differently. It knew the Coalition was opposed to the CEFC.

Anyway, that discretion is entirely proper. The CEFC is not an ethereal, non-political part of the Australian social fabric. It is the result of a four-year-old political compromise, designed to funnel money into one particular sector of the economy as part of the quid pro quo for theGreens’ carbon tax support.

So it’s a little bit silly to hear (as we did over the weekend) that by changing the CEFC’s mandate the Abbott Government is “picking winners”. That’s exactly what the CEFC was designed to do. The CEFC was designed to pick winners. It was designed to choose investments that it felt were not being adequately funded by open capital markets.

And the CEFC legislation already favours specific technologies. The body is not allowed to invest in carbon capture and storage or nuclear power. Nor can it invest in non-Australian projects. This last constraint seems a little peculiar if you think the CEFC’s ultimate goal is to reduce carbon emissions – a global, not a national, problem. But foreigners can’t vote.

Because it is not driven by the profit motive in a competitive market, the CEFC has to rely on non-market criteria on which to evaluate alternative investments. Right now that is done by these folk – the board of the CEFC. All the Abbott Government’s no-wind mandate does is constrain their criteria some more.

The idea that the CEFC is a “commercial” operation is nonsense. If it makes a profit consistently then it is a good candidate for privatisation. Why should the government own a profit-making financier? Why would it need to?

The CEFC got upset earlier this year when the Abbott Government asked it to lift its investment returns, asking it to “consistently outperform the market by a large margin”. But if the CEFC can’t beat the market with its government support, then the case for its continued existence is pretty weak.

Australia has a long history of government-owned banks like the CEFC – banks designed to push money into politically favoured sectors.

Who now remembers the Commonwealth Development Bank or the Australian Industry Development Corporation? Or the Commonwealth Bank’s Mortgage Bank Department and Industrial Finance Department? Or the joint public-private ventures of the Australian Resources Development Bank, the Primary Industry Bank of Australia, or the Australian Banks’ Export Refinance Corporation?

These banks were abolished or privatised because Australia came to recognise that markets allocate capital better than bureaucrats.

Right now there is a majority in the Senate preventing the abolition of the CEFC.

But it is almost inevitable that one day parliament will end the CEFC. Just as it ended all its other special development banks.
The Drum

abbott, hockey, cormann

More Evidence, that Wind Power is a FRAUD!

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The Wind Power Fraud (in pictures): Part 1 – the South Australian Wind Farm Fiasco

July 20, 2015 by

Definition of fraud

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In today’s post we lay out the wind power fraud in pictures, as it’s perpetrated in, what’s referred to as, ‘Australia’s wind power capital’, South Australia (tomorrow we expand the net to capture the debacle on the entire Eastern Grid).

To call the ‘performance’ of SA’s 17 wind farms (spread over a vast area of the State – with an installed capacity of 1,477MW) over the last few months “diabolical” is to flatter them.

SA’s Labor government has been talking up a wind powered future for months now – it’s presiding over the worst unemployment in the Nation, at 8.2% and rising fast – and seems to thinks the answer is out there somewhere – ‘blowin’ in the wind’. The fact that its wind power debacle has led to South Australians paying the highest power costs in the Nation – if not (on a purchasing power parity basis) the highest in the world – and, yet, the dimwits that run it wonder why it’s an economic train wreck (see our posts here and here).

Well, today, STT – always ready to rain on the wind industry’s parade – as well as the gullible and corrupt that cheer it on – spells it out in pictures – that even the most intellectually interrupted should be able to grasp.

The derisory data that follows comes courtesy of Aneroid Energy. We’ll start with a quick look at SA’s monthly performance (oh, and if the graphs appear fuzzy, click on them and they’ll pop up crystal clear in a new window).

May 2015 SA

Looking a bit like the meanderings of a drunken spider that had dipped one leg in the ink-well and staggered over the page, that’s the nonsense that wind farms can deliver power as an “alternative” to on-demand power generation sources such as hydro, gas and coal belted, yet again.

With 31 ‘chances’ to make a meaningful contribution to lighting up the230,000 homes said by wind power outfits to be ‘powered’ by their wind farms in SA – output collapses 13 times to less than 100MW – or less than 6.8% of the total installed capacity of 1,477MW.

Here’s the total output from all wind farms in SA for June 2015.

June 2015 SA

Having hardly lit up the screen for much of May, you’d think that June would see a better effort – but, oh no. Total output spends more time below 200MW (or 13% of installed capacity) than above. And hits the bottom of the pool more than 7 times – with ‘output’ failing to power a single kettle – let alone the hundreds of thousands of SA homes we’re constantly told are ‘powered’ by the wind.

Here’s the total output from all wind farms in SA for the start of July 2015.

July 2015 SA

Looking more like the fat bloke bouncing around in the deep-end of the local pool, after a long lunch, July’s effort (so far) isn’t much better than the months before.

A couple of short-lived ‘spurts aside, and the rest is largely a ‘joke’: crashing by around 1,000 MW over 24 hours; and almost repeating the ‘performance’ a few days later with a precipitous plummet of over 500 MW in a couple of hours – makes it pretty clear that the words ‘reliable’ and ‘wind power’ don’t belong on the same page, let alone in a sensible sentence.

Spending days struggling to produce 200MW; hours and hours producing less than half that (or less than 6.7% of capacity); and 50MW (3.38%) or less for hours at a stretch, tends to take the gloss off the glory heaped on SA’s wind power dream; and suggests its future will be more of an energy nightmare.

Having taken a ‘helicopter view’, we’ll zoom in now – for a closer look at some of the more outlandish results on: May 3, 16, 25 and 26; June 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 20, 29 and 30; July 2, 3 and 7.

3 May 2015 SA

Entire SA Grid – 3 May 2015 – from midnight to 9pm (21hrs):

Total wind farm output: midnight to 9pm – never more than 100MW; from 3am to 8pm (17hrs) – never much more than 50MW; and during the same period collapsing to ZERO around 6am, and 5pm to 6pm.

Output as a percentage of total installed wind farm capacity: midnight to 2 am – 3.4%; 7am to 2pm – 1.7%; 2am to 9pm – 3.38%; 6am and 5pm to 6pm – ZERO%.

16 May SA

Entire SA Grid – 16 May 2015 – from 1am to 12.30pm – a total collapse of 720MW to ZERO:

Total wind farm output: 11.30am to 5pm (5.5hrs) – never more than 100MW; collapsing to ZERO from 12.30pm to 2pm (1.5hrs).

Output as a percentage of total installed wind farm capacity: 11.30am to 5pm (5.5hrs) – never more than 6.8%; collapsing to ZERO% – from 12.30pm to 2pm (1.5hrs).

25 May SA

Entire SA Grid – 25 May 2015 – from 8am to noon – a collapse of 325MW to ZERO – a 100% drop in output, in around 4hrs.

Total output: from 11am to 9pm (10hrs) – never more than 50MW; from noon to 4pm (4hrs) – ZERO.

Output as a percentage of total installed wind farm capacity: 11am to 9pm – less than 3.85%; from noon to 4pm – ZERO%.

26 May SA

Entire SA Grid – 26 May 2015 – from midnight to 6pm (18hrs):

Total wind farm output: from midnight to 6pm – never much more than 350MW; from midnight to 2am 150MW; from 8am to 4pm – never more than 200MW; and falling to 90MW at 11am.

Output as a percentage of total installed wind farm capacity: from midnight to 2am – 10%; 8am to 4pm – never more than 13.5%; and dropping to 6.1% – at 11am.

Now for a closer look at June 2015.

12 June SA

Entire SA Grid – 12 June 2015 – from midnight to 4pm a collapse of over 600MW:

Total wind farm output: 10am to 6pm – less than 150MW; 3pm to 5pm – dropping to 50MW.

Output as a percentage of total installed wind farm capacity: 10am to 6pm – 10%; and 3pm to 5pm  – dropping to 3.85%.

13 June SA

Entire SA Grid – 13 June 2015 – from 9am to 3pm – a collapse of 750MW – 800MW to 50MW – or an output drop of 94% – at a rate of 125MW/hour:

Total wind farm output: from 2pm to 8pm – never much more than 100 MW; from 3pm to 5pm – around 50MW.

Output as a percentage of total installed wind farm capacity: 2pm to 8pm – between 6.8% and 10%; 3pm to 5pm – around 3.85%.

14 June SA

Entire SA Grid – 14 June 2015 – from 8am to 3pm – a collapse of over 650MW – from 700MW to 30MW – or a 96% drop in output:

Total wind farm output: from 1pm to 4pm (3hrs) – less than 100MW – dropping to 30MW.

Output as a percentage of total installed wind farm capacity: 1pm to 4pm – less than 6.8% – dropping to 2.03%.

16 June SA

Entire SA Grid – 16 June 2015 – 24 hours – never more than 140MW:

Total wind farm output: from midnight to 5pm (17hrs) – less than 30 MW; from 3am to 7am (4hrs) – ZERO; falling to ZERO between 9am and 11am.

Output as a percentage of total installed wind farm capacity: never more than 10% for the entire 24 hour period; midnight to 5pm – less than 2%; with ZERO% produced for around 5hrs.

17 June SA

Entire SA Grid – 17 June 2015 – 24 hours – never more than 260MW – or 17.6% of capacity:

Total wind farm output: from 5am to 8am – less than 140MW; dropping to 100MW at 8.30am.

Output as a percentage of total installed wind farm capacity: never more than 17.6%; 5am to 8am less than 9.4%; falling to 6.8%.

20 June SA

Entire SA Grid – 20 June 2015 – from midnight to 6pm (18hrs) – never more than 70MW:

Total wind farm output: from midnight to 6pm – less than 70MW; 3am to 6am (3hrs) – around 25MW; from 1pm to 6pm (5hrs) – 25MW; falling to 10MW – around 4pm.

Output as a percentage of total installed wind farm capacity: midnight to 5pm – less than 4.7%; 3am to 6am – 1.7%; 1pm – 6pm – 1.7%, falling to 0.7% – at 4pm.

29 June SA

Entire SA Grid – 29 June 2015 – from 3am to 1pm – an almost total collapse of 550MW to 10MW – or a 98% drop in output:

Total wind farm output: from 1pm to 5pm (4hrs) – never more than 10MW; from 6pm to midnight (6hrs) – 50MW – briefly rising to 170MW and dropping to 90MW.

Output as a percentage of total installed wind farm capacity: from 1pm to 5pm – 0.7%; 6pm to midnight – 3.3% – briefly rising to 11% – dropping back 6.1%.

30 June SA

Entire SA Grid – 30 June 2015 – for the 24 hour period – never more than 200MW:

Total wind farm output: from 1am to 7pm (18hrs) – never more than 80MW; from around 3am to around noon – less than than 40MW and closer to 20MW for that period; falling to less than 20MW around 4pm.

Output as a percentage of total installed wind farm capacity: 1am to 7pm (6hrs) – never more than 5.4%; from around 3am to around noon (9hrs) – less than than 2.7% and closer to 1.3% for that period; falling to less than 1.3% around 4pm.

Now a look at the scoreboard for July, so far.

2 July SA

Entire SA Grid – 2 July 2015 – a total collapse of output over the period – 700MW to around 10MW:

Total wind farm output: from noon to midnight (12hrs) – never more than 150MW; generally around 100MW – falling to 10MW around 10pm to midnight.

Output as a percentage of total installed wind farm capacity: from noon to midnight (12hrs) – never more than 10%MW; generally around 6.8% – falling to 0.7% around 10pm to midnight.

3 July SA

Entire SA Grid – 3 July 2015 – for the 24 hour period – never more than 150MW:

Total wind farm output: from midnight to 3am (3hrs) – never more than 20MW; twice falling to around 10MW; short burst to reach 80MW by 6am; dropping back to 40MW by 8am; with peaks and troughs later in the day – before dropping back to less than 100MW – 7pm to midnight.

Output as a percentage of total installed wind farm capacity: never more than 11% for the 24 hour period; much of it producing less than 6% – and often less than 2%.

7 July SA

Entire SA Grid – 7 July 2015 – from 2am to 1pm – a collapse (almost total) of 450MW – from 470MW to 20MW – or a 97% drop in output:

Total wind farm output: from 10am to midnight (14hrs) – never more than 60MW; twice falling to less than 20MW; and to ZERO around 10pm to midnight.

Output as a percentage of total installed wind farm capacity: from 10am to midnight (14hrs) – never more than 4.1%; twice falling to less than 1.3%; and to ZERO% – around 10pm to midnight.

We’re bored now – we’ve made our point: the idea that SA (or anywhere else for that matter) can ditch fossil fuel power generation sources and – by relying on wind power – go ‘100% renewable’ is pure fantasy.

Anyone who – after perusing the pitiful pictorial above – tries to tell you otherwise is probably not playing with the full deck. Either that, or they’ve got their trotters firmly planted in the wind power fraud trough.

At STT we love scorching wind power myths – and all the more so when it can be done with pictures.

In the last few months the lunatics from the fringes of the Labor party – and other hard-green-left nutjobs – have ramped up their rhetoric – pressing all and sundry join in their ultimate mission to go “fossil free” – they mean abstaining from the use of “fossil fuel”, rather than ceasing to rely on T-Rex and his – now stony/boney – kin. Although they have no apparent hesitation when it comes to burning up millions of litres of kerosene, flying to groovy backpacker must-sees, and “climate change” jamborees, all over the globe (see our post here).

Contrary to the anti-fossil fuel squad’s ranting, there isn’t a ‘choice’ between wind power and fossil fuel power generation: there’s a ‘choice’ between wind power (with fossil fuel powered back-up equal to 100% of its capacity) and relying on wind power alone. If you’re ready to ‘pick’ the latter, expect to be sitting freezing (or boiling) in the dark more than 60% of the time.

Wind power isn’t a ‘system’, it’s ‘chaos’ – the pictures tell the story.

One thing that amuses the STT gang, is seeing links to our posts appearing on the comments pages of online news sites, blog forums and the like: often they’re dropped into a ‘debate’ about the ‘wonders of wind’, with an apparently gleeful ‘splat’ – in a ‘get around that, and play fair’ kind of moment – that usually pulls the ‘debate’ to a shuddering halt.

STT predicts that this is going to be one such post.

So, next time you find yourself dealing with the intellectual pygmies, that are still clinging to their wind power myths and fantasies, why not flick them a link to this post – or have a little fun with an STT ‘splat moment’, on their favourite blogs and news sites?

Why not pitch a few sitters along with it, such as: on 3 May; after lunch on 25 May; after lunch on 13 June; on 16 June; on 20 June; and after lunch on 7 July:

How many South Australian homes (not kettles) were actually being powered by ‘wonderful wind’?

Where did all the power come from that kept the lights on and got the kettles boiling?

Was it coal? Was it gas? Or a bit of both?

In the light of your last answer, how much ‘dreaded’ CO2 gas was saved by SA’s 17 wind farms?

And what effect did wind power have on power prices in SA’s wholesale market for electricity?

We don’t expect them to enjoy it; but wind power worshippers have never been that keen on the facts.

Facts