Storing Wind Energy is another Unaffordable Scam…

July 23, 2015 / 1957chev / 2 Comments

The Patent Nonsense of ‘Storing’ Wind Power Smashed

July 23, 2015 by stopthesethings

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 5kW_DC 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 CO₂could 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.

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

July 22, 2015 / 1957chev / 1 Comment

An Ill-Wind in Ontario

by Tom Harris
July 21, 2015

Despite 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 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!

July 22, 2015July 22, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

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

July 22, 2015 by stopthesethings

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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:

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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

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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

More Evidence, that Wind Power is a FRAUD!

July 20, 2015July 20, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

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

July 20, 2015 by stopthesethings

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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).

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.

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.

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.

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%.

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).

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%.

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.

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%.

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%.

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%.

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.

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%.

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.

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%.

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.

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.

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%.

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.

Tom Harris Talks About the Negative Effects From Wynne’s Turbines….

July 18, 2015July 18, 2015 / 1957chev / 4 Comments

An ill-wind in Ontario

TOM HARRIS, GUEST COLUMNIST

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

FIRST POSTED: SATURDAY, JULY 18, 2015 07:00 PM EDT

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

“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.

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.

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

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.

But the approvals go ahead regardless.

— Harris is executive director of the Ottawa-based International Climate Science Coalition, which opposes the hypothesis carbon dioxide emissions from human activities are known to cause climate problems

More About the Lies the Windpushers Tell….

July 16, 2015 / 1957chev / 1 Comment

WIND FAIL: 20 QUOTES FOR 30 YEARS OF FALSE HOPES

Last week, news reports indicated the Senate Finance Committee will soon mark up legislation to retroactively extend a number of tax provisions that expired at the end of last year. Of note in this package is the wind Production Tax Credit (PTC). This would be the 10^thextension of the PTC since it became law in 1992.

Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, one of the original authors of the wind PTC, made clear last week in a letter to Chairman Hatch that despite his past statements, he wants yet another extension of this damaging provision. He stated:

“But, I also know this credit won’t go on forever. It was never meant to, and it shouldn’t. In 2012, the wind industry was the only industry to put forward a phase out plan. I have expressed support in the past for a responsible, multi-year phase out of the wind tax credit. But, I believe any phase out should be done in the context of comprehensive tax reform, where all energy tax provisions are on the table.” Senator Grassley letter to Chairman Hatch, 7/7/15

Sen. Grassley admits the wind PTC should not last forever and indicated he supports a phase out. It is clear that today Sen. Grassley does not want to see the wind PTC expire on his watch. Of course, this is significantly different than what he said 12 years ago:

“I’d say we’re going to have to do it [keep the PTC] for at least another five years, maybe for 10 years. Sometime we’re going to reach that point where it’s competitive (with other forms of energy). I think the argument for any tax credit is to make the new source of energy economically competitive.” (“Wind Energy Rides Roller Coaster Year.” Electrical Wholesaling, 4/1/03)

Sen. Grassley now appears not to believe what he said in 2003. Not only has more than 10 years passed, but the American Wind Energy Association claims that wind is not only competitive, but cheaper than other sources. In fact, AWEA claims that “the current cost of wind energy of under $50/MWh.” To put that in perspective, the Energy Information Administration explains that new combined cycle natural gas plants will produce electricity for $72/MWh. It appears that Sen. Grassley either does not believe the wind lobbyists or he was not being truthful in 2003 when he spoke about the PTC.

It turns out that wind promoters like Sen. Grassley and AWEA have long made claims that wind would soon be cost competitive and that the PTC would not be needed forever. Here are of some of their claims over the years:

1983 – Booz, Allen & Hamilton did a study for the Solar Energy Industries Association, American Wind Energy Association, and Renewable Energy Institute. It stated: “The private sector can be expected to develop improved solar and wind technologies which will begin to become competitive and self-supporting on a national level by the end of the decade [i.e. by 1990] if assisted by tax credits and augmented by federally sponsored R&D.”(Renewable Energy Industry, Joint Hearing before the Subcommittees of the Committee on Energy and Commerce et al., House of Representatives, 98^th Cong., 1^st sess. 1983)

1984 – Christopher Flavin of the Worldwatch Institute: “Tax credits have been essential to the economic viability of wind farms so far, but will not be needed within a few years.” (Christopher Flavin, “Electricity’s Future: The Shift to Efficiency and Small-Scale Power,” Worldwatch Paper 61, Worldwatch Institute, 11/84)

1985 – Christopher Flavin of the Worldwatch Institute: “Although wind farms still depend on tax credits, they are likely to be economical without this support within a few years.” (Christopher Flavin and Cynthia Pollock, “Harnessing Renewable Energy,” in Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 1985)

1985 – “Wind Energy Cannot Only Become Competitive, But Will In The 1990’s Be One Of The Cheapest Sources Of New Power.” “While wind power cannot yet deliver electricity at costs competitive with other energy sources – some experts estimate that it may cost anywhere from 9 to 12 cents a kilowatt-hour, as opposed to the 7-cents-a-kilowatt-hour cost of oil and gas -proponents point to a recent study by the Electric Power Research Institute of Palo Alto, Calif., a research group financed by electric utilities. That study indicated that wind energy cannot only become competitive, but will in the 1990’s be one of the cheapest sources of new power.” (Barry Fisher, “The Threat To Wind Energy,” The New York Times, 10/26/85)

1986 – Christopher Flavin of the Worldwatch Institute: “Early evidence indicates that wind power will soon take its place as a decentralized power source that is economical in many areas…. Utility-sponsored studies show that the better wind farms can produce power at a cost of about 7¢ per kilowatt-hour, which is competitive with conventional power sources in the United States.” (Christopher Flavin, “Electricity for a Developing World: New Directions,”Worldwatch Paper 70, Worldwatch Institute, 6/86)

1986 – Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute lamented the untimely scale-back of tax breaks for renewable energy, since the competitive viability of wind and solar technologies was “one to three years away.” (Lovins, K. Wells, “As a National Goal, Renewable Energy Has An Uncertain Future.” Wall Street Journal, 2/13/86)

1986 – A representative of the American Wind Energy Association testified: “The U.S. wind industry has … demonstrated reliability and performance levels that make them very competitive. It has come to the point that the California Energy Commission has predicted windpower will be that State’s lowest cost source of energy in the 1990s, beating out even large-scale hydro.”(Statement of Michael L.S. Bergey, American Wind Energy Association inRenewable Energy Industries, Hearing before the Subcommittee on Energy Conservation and Power of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, House of Representatives, 99^th Cong., 2^nd sess. 1986)

1990 – In 1990, two energy analysts at the Worldwatch Institute predicted an almost complete displacement of fossil fuels in the electric generation market within a couple decades [i.e. 2010]: “Within a few decades, a geographically diverse country such as the United States might get 30 percent of its electricity from sunshine, 20 percent from hydropower, 20 percent from wind power, 10 percent from biomass, 10 percent from geothermal energy, and 10 percent from natural-gas-fired cogeneration.” (Christopher Flavin and Nicholas Lenssen, Beyond the Petroleum Age: Designing a Solar Economy, Worldwatch Institute, 1990)

1991 – Dale Osborn, Former AWEA President: “The Wind Industry Could Produce, At Competitive Prices, Up To One-Third Of The Nation’s Electricity Needs Within The Next 30 Years.” “‘Here we go again. Nuclear, coal and oil appear to be receiving all the benefits, while clean, proven energy technologies like wind are receiving little serious attention,’ said Dale Osborn, president of the California-based company, U.S. Windpower, and president of the American Wind Energy Association. ‘Given an equal opportunity to compete fairly, the wind industry could produce, at competitive prices, up to one-third of the nation’s electricity needs within the next 30 years.’” (“Bush Administration’s Energy Plan Represents Another Missed Opportunity For America, Says U.S. Windpower,” PR Newswire, 2/20/91)

1991 – “Wind Power Will Be Cheaper Than Conventional Power By 2000.” “’Wind power will be cheaper than conventional power by 2000 when strides in engineering will have made windmills even more economically competitive,’ said Paulus Soullie, a windmills engineer at Holland’s Energy Research Centre in Petten. A windmill with a record 1.3Mw output will be built later this year in Holland.” (Peter Spinks, “Charm Of The Farm Goes With The Wind,” The Observer, 1/13/91)

1996 – Christopher Flavin, President of WorldWatch Institute. “Following the laws of technological progress and large-scale manufacturing, the cost of wind-generated electricity has fallen by more than two-thirds over the past decade, to the point where it is lower than that of new coal plants in many regions. Within the next decade, it is projected to fall to 3 to 4 cents per kilowatt-hour, making wind the least expensive power source that can be developed on a large scale worldwide.” (“Power Shock: The Next Energy Revolution.”WorldWatch, January/February 1996)

1998 – Ken Lay, former CEO of Enron, to Gov. Bush in 1998. “The bill, H.R. 1401 (Thomas R-CA), extends for five years the existing wind production tax credit (PTC), which was passed by the Bush Administration in the Energy Policy Act of 1992. Wind is the fastest growing new electrical generation technology in the world today and has rapidly decreased its production costs until it is close to being competitive with conventional generation technologies.” (“Enron’s Ken Lay asks for Texas Gov. Bush’s help in securing tax credits for wind.” National Wind Watch, 9/10/2008)

1999 – A DOE Assistant Secretary Said Wind Power Is Getting Close To Being Competitive With Wholesale Power. ‘”Although wind power is not yet competitive with wholesale power, it’s getting close… ‘Of all the renewable technologies, wind power is the closest to market competitiveness today. When you consider the improved technology the opportunity for consumers to choose green power, and the concerns over climate change, it all adds up to a strong potential for wind to really take off over the next 20 years.’” (Taylor Moore, “Wind Power: Gaining Momentum,” EPRI Journal, 12/22/99)

2001 – Robert Boyd, Enron Wind Corp. VP: “With Additional R & D Funding And The Continuation Of The Production Tax Credit For The Next Five Years Wind Should Become Price Competitive With Conventional Generation Technologies.” “Wind energy is close to becoming competitive with conventional fuels. With additional R & D funding and the continuation of the Production Tax Credit for the next five years wind should become price competitive with conventional generation technologies.” (Robert T. Boyd, Committee On Finance, U.S. Senate, Testimony, 7/19/01)

2003 – Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) on the PTC. “I’d say we’re going to have to do it for at least another five years, maybe for 10 years. Sometime we’re going to reach that point where it’s competitive (with other forms of energy). I think the argument for any tax credit is to make the new source of energy economically competitive.” (“Wind Energy Rides Roller Coaster Year.” Electrical Wholesaling, 4/1/03)

2004 – Experts Said in 2004 Wind Was “Getting Close” To Viability And “Very Nearly Competitive.” “Not long ago wind power was the domain of fringe scientists and environmentalists…. But the industry is maturing and growing quickly–and is beginning to find its place as one viable element in the energy puzzle. … Still, says Bob Thresher of the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab, ‘wind is the first renewable technology that is very nearly competitive in the market for bulk power generation.’ … [Wind pioneer Jim] Dehlsen says the cost of wind needs to fall below three cents per kilowatt hour–without tax credits–to truly break society’s addiction to fossil fuels. “It’s still not there, but we’re getting close,” he says.” (Brad Stone, “The Master of Wind,” Newsweek, 9/20/2004)

2004 – Edward Berkel, Senior VP Shell WindEnergy: “Cost Reductions Will Eventually Make Wind Fully Competitive With CCTG Power.” “Cost reductions will eventually make wind fully competitive with CCTG power. If PTCs are not replaced other mechanism might be used, i.e. green certificates. Driven by customer needs, overall world pressure to reduce GGEs.” (“Where’s The Bill?” Project Finance, 3/2004)

2006 – A Former FERC Chairman Said The Wind Industry Will Be Eventually Be Able To Survive Without Subsidies. “[Pat Wood, former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)] said that the high price of fossil fuels make it a ‘pretty safe bet’ that the wind energy industry will eventually be able to survive without government subsidies in the form of the wind production tax credit.” (Suzanna Strangmeier, “Former FERC Chairman Pat Wood Sees Bright Future for Wind Power,” Oil Daily, 5/2/06)

2012 – Denise Bode, Former AWEA CEO on PTC Phase-out. “In coordination with any phase down of the credit, we would urge Congress to consider additional policy mechanisms to encourage a diverse portfolio that includes renewable energy. With the policy certainty that accompanies a stable extension, the industry believes it can achieve the greater economies of scale and technology improvements that it needs to become cost competitive without the PTC.” (AWEA letter to Congress. 12/12/12)

2012 – Secretary of Energy Steven Chu: “I think it’s something the wind industry sees: “As the technology gets better, there’s no need to be subsidizing a competitive industry once it’s competitive.” “So over a period of time, especially as — and no dates were discussed — but over a period of time, a road map of phasing out, you see where the prices are going and you can see” how to eliminate the credit…. Just as eventually VEETC and other things were eventually phased out, I think it’s something the wind industry sees: As the technology gets better, there’s no need to be subsidizing a competitive industry once it’s competitive,” (“Chu opens the door to phaseout of wind incentive.” Governors’ Wind Energy Coalition, 3/15/12)

2014 – Warren Buffett on how wind isn’t profitable without subsidies. “I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire’s tax rate,” Buffet told an audience in Omaha, Nebraska recently. “For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.” (U.S. News & World Report, 5/12/14)

2015 – Senator Chuck Grassley on (yet another) PTC extension. “But, I also know this credit won’t go on forever. It was never meant to, and it shouldn’t. In 2012, the wind industry was the only industry to put forward a phase out plan. I have expressed support in the past for a responsible, multi-year phase out of the wind tax credit. But, I believe any phase out should be done in the context of comprehensive tax reform, where all energy tax provisions are on the table.” (Senator Grassley letter to Chairman Hatch, 7/7/15)

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. For more than 30 years, wind promoters have claimed that wind would soon not need subsidies because it would be cost-competitive. But here we are in 2015, and despite claims from AWEA that wind is cost competitive, their actions suggest they don’t believe their own talking points. After all, if wind were competitive, the wind lobby would be greedy to insist on $6 billion from the taxpayer for the PTC.

AWEA certainly knows that their claims about wind truly being cost competitive are not true. New research by the Institute for Energy Research found that electricity from new wind is three times as expensive as electricity for the existing fleet of coal units. This is the real reason wind supporters need the wind PTC to be continually extended. Without the PTC, no one would build wind turbines. As Warren Buffet said, “On wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”

Instead of looking towards Senator Grassley, Congress should heed the advice of another author of the wind PTC, former Rep. Phil Sharp from Indiana. He said in 2013 that the tax credit should have “a sunset provision to ensure that the temporary incentive does not become a permanent subsidy.” (“Extending the wind tax credit.” Washington Times, 12/5/13)

Members like Senator Grassley want the wind PTC to be a permanent subsidy. It is time to break this cycle and allow this subsidy to phase out. Congress should embrace HR 1901, the PTC Elimination Act by Reps. Marchant and Pompeo, to accomplish this goal.

Wind Turbine Host, “Tells All” at Australian Government Inquiry! Brilliant!

July 15, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Farmer Knocks Back ‘Offers’ of $100,000 a Year to Host Turbines & Tells Senate: “These Things Shouldn’t Be In Anyone’s Backyard”

July 15, 2015 by stopthesethings

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Remember all those glowing stories about wind power outfits being welcomed into rural communities with open arms? You know, tales about how farmers are dying to have turbines lined up all over their properties? How locals can’t wait to pick up some of the thousands of permanent,high paying jobs on offer? How developers are viewed with the kind of reverence reserved for Royalty?

No?

We’ve forgotten them too.

The wind industry routinely trots out 4 or 5 year old community surveys (where the respondents don’t and will never live within driving distance from these things) that purport to show the ‘love’. But, when the question is put fair and square to people that know they’ll end up as wind industry “road-kill”, the results tend to come out a little differently:

1,000 Sign Petition Against Mt Emerald Wind Farm: Survey says 92% Opposed

After years of being lied to, bullied, berated and treated like fools (at best) and “road-kill” (at worst), for most, the ‘gloss’ comprising wind industry PR efforts to ‘win hearts and minds’ has well and truly worn off.

These days, the communities aren’t so gullible; they aren’t so welcoming; and they aren’t willing to take it lying down. Despite having the skills of the best spin doctors in the business at its disposal, it’s “outrage” that’s become the word synonymous with the wind industry, wherever it goes. In short, rural communities have had enough – and they’re fighting back, by fair means and foul:

Angry Wind Farm Victims Pull the Trigger: Turbines Shot-Up in Montana and Victoria

These days, the PR outfits that are paid a packet to ‘shape the debate’ – like the Clean Energy Council and the Australian Wind Alliance – are probably just stealing from their wind industry clients.

Most of their recent efforts are just plain silly, and plenty seem to backfire. The case of Hamish and Anna Officer from Macarthur is only just the latest example. The industry’s case on wind turbine noise sleep and health; corporate social responsibility and relations with its contracted hosts has taken a hammering in the last few months:

SA Farmers Paid $1 Million to Host 19 Turbines Tell Senate they “Would Never Do it Again” due to “Unbearable” Sleep-Destroying Noise

Unwilling Turbine Hosts Tell Senate: Australia’s Most Notorious Wind Power Outfit – Infigen – a Team of Bullies, Liars & Thugs

In an effort to hose down the utterly damning evidence given to the Senate Inquiry by Clive and Trina Gare, and the group of unwilling turbine hosts from Flyers Creek in NSW, who have been repeatedly bullied and threatened by near-bankrupt Infigen, the wind industry’s spruikers trotted out the Officers to parrot from a well-oiled script about how much they love living cheek-by-jowl with the 48 Vestas V112s they host on their property at Macarthur in western Victoria. The Officers telling the SMH that they “live a good deal closer to wind turbines than most people” and simply love the look of the things; and that the noise is as soothing as a well-written symphony (the wind industry’s cooked-up propaganda piece about the Officers is available here).

There’s only one minor problem with the Officer’s story. And that’s the fact that the Officers are spending something in the order of $2million on a dream home 30km away from the public health disaster they helped create. The apparent aim of the Officer’s pricey building program is to leave their current home, and the sweet “music” created by their fleet of “beautiful, majestic, landscape improvers” – it must pain them so, to have to leave them so far behind:

Macarthur Turbine Hosts Destroy Community & Bolt as Hammering the Wind Industry becomes the “New Black”

When people with real honour and integrity – like the Gares – tell the story of their self-inflected misery, there’s a ring of honesty that gels with country people. Not so, with hypocrites that run in lockstep with the wind industry; and who seem happy to pocket the loot and leave their neighbours for dead. Which brings to mind the ol’ chestnut that you can fool some of the people, some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people, all the time.

Now, back to the evidence before the Senate Inquiry. David Brooks, Dr Michael Crawford and Mark Tomlinson gave a very solid wrap up on the institutional corruption that pervades State Planning departments and the Clean Energy Regulator. But we think the stand-out testimony was that given by Michael Lyons – a farmer from Bodangora in NSW – who was repeatedly offered a deal to host 10 turbines on his property in exchange for over $100,000 a year. STT thinks Michael’s response as to why he knocked back that kind of money says it all really:

Mr Lyons: The first time I knocked it back, I did not know anything about them, to be quite honest. The proponent was quite insistent that I host turbines, but I said no. I said, ‘I am going to find out a little bit more about them first before I say yes or no.’ At that stage I was pretty open minded. Another contact of mine had done a lot more research into them and through that person I then formed the opinion that these things were not something that should be inflicted on anybody. Call me a nimby if you like but I do not think that these things should be in anyone’s backyard, let alone mine.

Here’s the rest of their evidence.

Senate Select Committee on Wind Turbines – 29 May 2015

BROOKS, Mr David, Chairman, Parkesbourne/Mummel Landscape Guardians Inc.

CRAWFORD, Dr Michael Arthur, Private capacity

LYONS, Mr Michael David, Coordinator, Bodangora Wind Turbine Awareness Group

TOMLINSON, Mr Mark, Member, Residents against Jupiter Wind Turbines Noise Committee

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

Dr Crawford: Yes, it has.

Mr Brooks: Yes.

Mr Tomlinson: Yes.

Mr Lyons: Yes.

CHAIR: Thank you. The committee has your submissions and I 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.

Dr Crawford: Thank you for the invitation to appear here today. I am speaking as a private individual, though I am also a board member of the Waubra Foundation and a member of the local group, Residents against Jupiter Wind Turbines. Members of that group have had extensive dealings with the New South Wales planning department as well as other New South Wales agencies in relation to Jupiter and other wind farms. While I am critical of the way the system currently operates, I acknowledge that the current New South Wales Minister for Planning, Rob Stokes, and his predecessor Pru Goward, as well as the secretary of the department, appear to be trying to improve the process. But institutional inertia is powerful and the changes are slow, meanwhile innocent people are being badly harmed and that will continue under current arrangements.

I have worked for more than 30 years as a management consultant to private and public sector organisations, normally advising the CEO and other senior executives on matters of corporate strategy and organisation design. While my first degree was in physics and maths, my PhD relates specifically to organisation design and my subsequent research was in corporate change. I also taught on executive programs at the Australian Graduate School of Management. That is by way of background.

It is clear to me that the current processes for approving and regulating wind farms in New South Wales are excessively complex and neither economically efficient nor socially just. They are essentially a tick-the-box planning exercise with little integrity, conducted at large public and private expense, to produce an outcome favourable to developers. As you have already discovered, conditions imposed by wind farm approvals are quite deficient and, unlike some industries such as coalmining in New South Wales, compliance testing and enforcement is virtually non-existent. Without effective compliance and enforcement in any field, conditions will be regularly breached.

It is possible to add some integrity to the current approvals system in various ways such as relying only on data provided by parties with no association with the proponent, not accepting judgements made by consultants hired by the developer to support their case and imposing decommissioning funding conditions guaranteed to not leave the taxpayer or the local community on the hook.

Alternatively, it is possible to remove most of the inefficiency, subjectivity and injustice by replacing the current regulatory process by a standards-based one that forces developers to absorb externalities through fair commercial transactions and imposes genuinely rigorous ongoing noise monitoring with material costs for breaches. Such an approach would be far more transparent and much less exposed to the risks of corruption than the current process. Our local group provided the previous New South Wales planning minister with advice on how that could be done but have heard nothing further. Hopefully this committee will have more success. Thank you.

Mr Tomlinson: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak here today. Residents against Jupiter Wind Turbines is a community group established in the Tarago area of New South Wales opposing the proposed Jupiter wind farm. A subcommittee was formed, now known as the noise committee, and members of this committee are tasked with investigating various aspects of wind turbine noise. Some of these areas are noise propagation and the effects of topography and geographical spread, the relationship between multiple turbines and wind shear relating to international standards—just to mention a few.

My role as a member of the noise committee is to investigate the background noise monitoring process as outlined in the various wind farm guidelines used in New South Wales. This role involves monitoring equipment set-up, data collection, data analysis and preliminary findings reports. This has also led into the investigation into wind turbine infrasound. The committee purchased industry standard class 1 noise monitoring equipment and use the current New South Wales draft wind farm guidelines and the 2003 South Australia wind farm guidelines as guiding documents, as used by the Department of Planning and Infrastructure.

In January 2015, we commenced a monitoring program to ascertain the ambient environmental background noise at six properties around the proposed wind farm. We have currently completed five and, as a result, have discovered numerous deficiencies within the guidelines used for wind farm approvals. The major deficiencies include removal of extraneous noise; wind over microphone; position of monitoring equipment; checks and balances as to the accuracy of noise monitoring reports submitted by developer-paid acousticians; ongoing compliance monitoring; and others listed in our submission.

In our monitoring program, we employed a Svantek 977 class 1 noise data logger, a wind data logger positioned at microphone height, a wind data logger on a portable 10-metre tower and a TASCAM DR-40 digital sound recorder to achieve full 24/7 sound recordings for the purpose of extraneous noise removal. We have also purchased three microbarometers, which are capable of recording infrasound levels from 0.05 hertz to 20 hertz, with which we have recorded wind turbine infrasound out to 14 kilometres.

I must stress at this point that we are not acousticians and we do not purport to be such; we are simply a community group putting forward our views and observations after conducting background noise monitoring, according to the relevant wind farm guidelines used in New South Wales. We believe the current wind farm guidelines are in no way adequate and must be amended as a matter of urgency. Thank you.

Mr Lyons: In the interests of time, I think you will find you already have a copy of my opening address. I am quite happy to pass on making opening remarks, so that we can get on with more questions.

Mr Brooks: Before I begin my presentation, I would like to thank you for all the work that you have done on the issues of this inquiry, especially for your interim report. If all its recommendations are implemented then there will be some hope that wind farm neighbours will find some relief at last. Today, I will limit myself to three topics that concern planning and regulation. I will deal with each topic briefly and then draw some conclusions from them, taken together. For evidence in detail for what I shall say, I must refer you to my submissions.

Topic No. 1: first, I wish to summarise the situation relating to the unauthorised turbine relocations of the Gullen Range wind farm because this matter illustrates the unreliability, incompetence, negligence and impropriety of the planning and assessment of wind farms in New South Wales. I realise that you cannot directly affect state planning issues, but it is important that you should be aware of them if you are to make recommendations for the federal government’s negotiations with the states through COAG, and for new measures regarding federal agencies. It is not an exaggeration to say that the suffering of wind farm neighbours is almost entirely due to inadequate planning and assessment at state level.

The project approval for the Gullen Range wind farm prohibits the proponent from moving turbines up to 250 metres from their approved positions without seeking permission from the Minister for Planning—that is condition 1.5. Moreover, section 75W(2) of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 of New South Wales insists that modifications that are not ‘consistent with the existing approval require the permission of the Minister for Planning’. The proponent ignored these conditions and built the infrastructure of the wind farm with 69 of the 73 turbine footings in the wrong place without seeking the permission of the minister. This was a clear violation of both the project approval and the EPA Act. Nonetheless the department of planning has allowed the proponent to submit a modification application in order to get retrospective approval for all these violations, and the department has consistently recommended that such retrospective approval be granted by the Planning Assessment Commission.

I cannot go into all the twists and turns by which the department has justified its response to this violation. You may wish to ask questions about that presently. Here, I only wish to point out that a project approval and a clause in a law, which have perfectly clear and intelligible meanings, are being deliberately disregarded by the department and that the department’s only justification for this is sophistry. This makes a mockery of the idea of regulation. That is topic one.

Topic 2, much more briefly: the Gullen Range has been approved under the completely inadequate South Australian noise guidelines 2003. When neighbours have asked for the approval to be reviewed because of the deficiencies of the noise guidelines, they have been told that this cannot happen because the EPA Act allows a developer to sue the minister for compensation if the minister revokes or modifies an approval. The planning law in this way gives certainty to the developer but excludes any possibility of relief to neighbours.

Topic 3: under the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act, the federal act, the Clean Energy Regulator can consider suspending the accreditation of a wind farm if the regulator ‘believes on reasonable grounds that the power station is being operated in contravention of a law of the Commonwealth, a state or a territory’—that is subsection 30E(3). However, the regulator seems to have unlimited discretion to avoid forming a reasonable belief. There is abundant evidence in the public domain that the Gullen Range wind farm is in breach of New South Wales law, but the New South Wales department of planning refuses to say so and the Clean Energy Regulator refuses to consider all the evidence. Moreover, the Clean Energy Regulator has adopted the preposterous position that it can only test whether a wind farm is in breach of law in the present. It cannot, so it thinks, test whether a wind farm has been in breach in the past.

If the New South Wales Planning Assessment Commission gives retrospective approval to all the violations of the project approval of the Gullen Range wind farm, the Clean Energy Regulator will refuse to consider whether the wind farm has been in breach of New South Wales law and the wind farm will keep over a year’s worth of renewable energy certificates, worth somewhere in the region of several million dollars to which, arguably, it is not entitled. Those are the three topics; two quick conclusions.

Firstly, a law or a project approval can be quite clear and unambiguous, yet a government agency will arrogate to itself the discretionary power to disregard the clear meaning of that law or that approval, and to render it meaningless. There is no check or balance to prevent such an abuse of power by that government agency. Both the New South Wales department of planning and the Clean Energy Regulator are guilty of this abuse of power. Secondly, when the law protects the rights and capital of a developer then the law is hard and firm and solid, and will be respected by government agencies. But when a law is likely to make difficulties for a developer, a regulatory agency will use sophistry to disregard the law and to avoid enforcing the law against the developer. This gives the developers a privileged position in the face of the law, offends against the principle of equality before the law and subverts any possibility of serious regulation.

Finally, in view of these facts, there needs to be a royal commission into wind farm development in Australia. Such a commission is necessary if the corrupt nature of planning, assessment and regulation is to be addressed and overcome. Thank you.

Senator DAY: Dr Crawford, I am drawing on your experience with organisation and corporate culture. Can you explain why, in the face of such overwhelming evidence regarding the adverse health effects of wind turbines, there is such a denial, which seems to defy all logic, by so many operators, regulators, commentators and others? It is a phenomenon which really intrigues me. You have got a PhD in this, so please enlighten me.

Dr Crawford: Without actually going to the PhD, I believe that it was Upton Sinclair who said something like, ‘It’s extremely difficult to get someone to understand something when their salary depends on not understanding that.’ Basically, if you look at not just the wind industry but regulatory agencies in this area, and given the commitment of government to introduce renewable energy in this country, everyone’s incentives are actually aligned with pretending there is no problem. To recognise a problem would put people in the situation where they then have to overtly recognise to themselves that they are behaving in a way which certainly some people would describe as evil—they are inflicting harm on others simply for their personal benefit in terms of ongoing salary and other acceptances.

Senator DAY: Thank you.

Senator LEYONHJELM: I have a question for Mr Lyons. You are part of the group opposed to the Bodangora wind energy facility in central New South Wales. I understand it will have 33 turbines. Can you tell us what is the level of opposition locally to that facility?

Mr Lyons: The community opposition was overwhelming—and still is. I think it has probably grown because people have got themselves a lot more educated as to the negative impacts of wind farms. When we did the submissions to the department of planning and infrastructure, it worked out, I think, that it was 94, 96 per cent opposed within the community. Of those that were not opposed, there were 163 total submissions. I think it was 152 opposed and, of the remainder, I think there were a mixture of government agencies, of which most of them had issues—still unresolved to this day. Of the individual ones, they were from host farms, host families. There were two anonymous and, of those two anonymous, one came from a distance of 50 kilometres outside the project area.

Senator LEYONHJELM: The facility has not been built yet—is that right?

Mr Lyons: That is correct.

Senator LEYONHJELM: When will it be built?

Mr Lyons: As soon as they get finance, and they cannot get finance until they get a power purchase agreement.

Senator LEYONHJELM: They have been waiting for the RET agreement, presumably.

Mr Lyons: That is correct.

Senator LEYONHJELM: How many host properties are there?

Mr Lyons: I am going on memory. This submission went into the department of planning a couple of years ago. I may be a couple out, but I think there were eight host families.

Senator LEYONHJELM: What is their view of it? Have you had any contact with them?

Mr Lyons: I have had very limited contact because a lot of them are my neighbours. I am the largest single non-host neighbour on the southern side of the project area.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Were you offered the opportunity to become a host?

Mr Lyons: Several times.

Senator LEYONHJELM: And you knocked it back?

Mr Lyons: Correct, yes.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Why was that?

Senator LEYONHJELM: How much money do you think you turned down?

Mr Lyons: We are talking tens of thousands here. The situation is that Mount Bodangora, which is the name of the property, is the highest point across Australia on the latitude that it sits so it is reasonably high up, it is fairly well exposed to wind and there are quite a few ridges around. I think I could probably put up 10 turbines at least without any worries.

Senator LEYONHJELM: On the basis of $10,000 a year?

Mr Lyons: The contract, which you would have a copy of, is an original contract that I have. It is not something that we made up; it was actually handed to me by a potential host farmer, who eventually knocked the whole project back as well. I understand, from memory, that it was $11,000 for the first turbine and $10,000 per turbine per year after that.

Senator LEYONHJELM: So you are not the only local who knocked back hosting turbines?

Mr Lyons: That is a good question. I would have to get back you on to that.

Senator LEYONHJELM: I thought you said you got a copy of the contract from somebody who knocked it back?

Mr Lyons: Yes, you are quite right. There were several others. I was just trying to think how many, not whether I was the only one.

Senator LEYONHJELM: So was there more than one?

Mr Lyons: There was certainly more than one.

Senator LEYONHJELM: The department of planning and infrastructure, I gather, has told you that they do not have the resources to adequately check on this facility. Is that correct? Can you explain what they said?

Mr Lyons: Yes, they verbally told me that over the phone. They certainly were not prepared to put it in writing.

Senator LEYONHJELM: What exactly did they say?

Mr Lyons: Essentially they said that the department did not have either the financial resources or the manpower resources to check on whether or not the proponent had actually completed what they were supposed to do. As long as the proponent had made what looked like a an attempt to fulfil the director-general’s requirements, that was good enough for the department.

Senator LEYONHJELM: We have been unable so far to get the relevant New South Wales authorities to come along and tell us how the process for approving wind farms in New South Wales operates. We do not know whether that is deliberate or not but we hope that we can resolve that before too much longer. In the absence of that information, can you tell us who approves them and then who checks compliance with the planning approvals subsequently?

Mr Brooks: One fact that may be of interest to you in relation to this is my association went to the Land and Environment Court back in 2009. For that purpose, we subpoenaed all the correspondence between the department and the developer—the original developer. We got two volumes of correspondence. It was quite obvious from that correspondence that the department was indeed helping the developer to put the proposal in a form where it could get approval.

For my world—I used to be an academic—it was rather like a supervisor helping a postgraduate to write a thesis; so the supervisor will say you need more of an argument here, you need more evidence for this bit, this bit of you argument needs clarification and so on. The officials in the department of planning were doing that for the developer for months and months. Whether or not the people who then go on to recommend the proposal for approval are the same officials, I cannot tell you—you would have to ask the department of planning. But certainly the department of planning itself would seem to have a conflict of interest because if a supervisor helps a postgraduate to write a thesis, they do not then examine the thesis.

Senator LEYONHJELM: What contribution does the local council have to that process?

Mr Brooks: They can make a submission just like anybody else but they do not have any authoritative power of decision.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Once it is built and operating, what is your understanding of checking compliance with planning conditions?

Mr Brooks: This goes back to the developer, who will use the same noise consultant who did the original noise projections. That noise consultant will put in a report and then that, presumably, will be accepted by the department of planning. I do not think there is any compulsory obligation on the department of planning to do any independent checking.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Does the council have any role at all in verifying compliance?

Mr Brooks: No, because all of this is done at the level of the state government.

Senator URQUHART: Mr Tomlinson, can you tell me about your organisation, the Residents Against Jupiter Wind Turbines Noise Committee. How many members do you have?

Mr Tomlinson: On the noise committee, we have three members. The Residents Against Jupiter community group has in the vicinity of about 140-odd members.

Senator URQUHART: Is this like a subcommittee of that committee?

Mr Tomlinson: This is a subcommittee, yes.

Senator URQUHART: Are you funded at all?

Mr Tomlinson: No, we are not funded. We have had members donate some money to purchase equipment.

Senator URQUHART: Is this the equipment that you talked about earlier?

Mr Tomlinson: That is correct.

Senator URQUHART: What was the cost of all that equipment?

Mr Tomlinson: The cost was around $8,000 for the equipment we have.

Senator URQUHART: You said in your opening statement that you are not acousticians. Is there anybody in there that is qualified to actually run that equipment?

Mr Tomlinson: No, there is not although we have been in contact with some acousticians who have given us some guidance, one of those being Steven Cooper.

Senator URQUHART: Mr Lyons, can I ask you how many members you have in your awareness group?

Mr Lyons: We are a fairly loose-knit organisation, comprising every neighbour surrounding the turbines area. It is probably around about 30.

Senator URQUHART: What would be the area that you are looking at? What would be the radius of it?

Mr Lyons: Of the project area, I think it would be about 28,000 hectares.

Senator URQUHART: Are the 30 people within that area?

Mr Lyons: No, outside of that area. I may stand corrected on the 28,000 but I think that is what hectare area is of the project itself. We are outside that area.

Senator URQUHART: You said you called for submissions and I did not quite understand your numbers there so if I could just go back through them. I think you said you received 163 submissions. What was the process that you went through?

Mr Lyons: The project was put on public display for 60 days.

Senator URQUHART: Whereabouts?

Mr Lyons: It was at the local council. I think it was also online on the department of planning website, I believe, although I got my copy from the council, a digital copy.

Senator URQUHART: Was this the planning project?

Mr Lyons: This was for the Bodangora wind farm. It was on display for 60 days. I think the general public had about six weeks to put submissions in. We put in a submission of over 900 pages detailing what was wrong with the project. Basically, I think, we were totally ignored.

Senator URQUHART: So those 163 submissions went in to the local council?

Mr Lyons: No, this was a state significant development so it went into the department of planning.

Senator URQUHART: That was what I wanted to clear up. As the wind turbine awareness group for the area that you talk about, have you undertaken any research to determine the community attitudes to wind farms?

Mr Lyons: Very much so.

Senator URQUHART: Has it been formal or informal? How have you done that?

Mr Lyons: We held a community meeting which we funded ourselves within Wellington. I think we had about 200 or 250 people show up. We invited different speakers including Ms Sarah Laurie, who spoke here earlier today. We also invited the proponent and several other wind farm companies who were proposing to put wind farms in the Wellington area. Infigen were the only ones that actually showed up, which was the proponent for the Bodangora wind farm.

Senator URQUHART: Was that a question-and-answer type community meeting?

Mr Lyons: Yes, pretty much. Guest speakers would speak for a while and then it was open to questions and answers, a bit like this is today. It was very much overwhelmingly against the proposal. The research that we did as part of our response to the department of planning for our response to the EA was very much against the project. The community just does not want this project.

Senator URQUHART: The 200 to 250 people that came along, how big a radius do those people live in? Are they part of this group of 30 that are part of your awareness group or how was that made up? Do you know?

Mr Lyons: I do not quite get where your group of 30 fits in. Are you talking about that the Bodangora Wind Turbine Awareness Group? Probably about half of us were able to come that particular day.

Senator URQUHART: So the rest of the 200 to 250 people were from within that community?

Mr Lyons: They were from as far away as South Australia really. Dr Laurie came from South Australia. We had a couple of speakers from South Australia because that was where most of the wind farms that we knew of at the time were located, so we wanted to get some information from there. By far the vast majority of people were locals. By local I mean I would say within 30 kilometres probably.

Senator URQUHART: Mr Brooks, your organisation, the landscape guardians, how many members do you have?

Mr Brooks: Back in 2009 when we went to court, we had a maximum membership I think of 173. Since then, and especially since the wind farm has been built, people have got demoralised and so on so our official paid-up membership now is actually somewhere around 20. We are not the only organisation. There is also Crookwell District Landscape Guardians. I believe they have a membership of about 100, which is quite strong. The other thing which is relevant is that even though people do not pay their subscriptions and continue their membership, they still object to the wind farm. The whole community still knows each other. We still see each other.

Senator URQUHART: As part of your group, do you undertake research to determine community attitudes? How do you get your information?

Mr Brooks: We have not done that. We have had meetings. I might cite the Planning Assessment Commission meeting that took place in September last year, which was held in Crookwell in the RSL. About 200 people turned up to that. It was obvious just being in the room that the overwhelming majority were against the wind farm. I have never had any doubt from all our meetings over the years that certainly the overwhelming majority of people who are going to be affected by the wind farm are solidly opposed to it.

Senator URQUHART: Dr Crawford, you indicated at the start that you were also a director—I think that was the right terminology—of the Waubra Foundation and you are also part of the Residents Against Jupiter Wind Turbines Noise. Are you just on the committee or are you part of the larger group?

Dr Crawford: I am certainly part of the larger group. When we had a community meeting, I was elected as chairman. We had a community meeting in February last year with 200 people and that group elected me as chairman to chair that and pass the motions which went to the New South Wales government. I also happen to be a member of the noise committee.

Senator URQUHART: So you wear a few hats?

Dr Crawford: Yes.

Senator URQUHART: Mr Tomlinson, are you a member of other organisations or just the Residents Against Jupiter?

Mr Tomlinson: No, just Residents Against Jupiter.

Senator URQUHART: Mr Lyons, is your only membership of Bodangora Wind Turbine Awareness Group? Are you a member of other groups?

Mr Lyons: No.

Senator URQUHART: And Mr Brooks?

Mr Brooks: I am vice-president of New South Wales Landscape Guardians, which is a sort of umbrella organisation for—I will have to check the number. I cannot remember whether the number of our affiliated associations is eight or whether it has gone down to five, because again you have the problem of people not always renewing their subscriptions. But it is somewhere in that region.

Mr Lyons: I would just like to correct the record with you, Senator. Dr Laurie did not attend the Wellington public meeting; she attended the Planning Assessment Commission meeting in Wellington. She only did a teleconference presentation at the public meeting.

Senator URQUHART: Okay. Thank you.

CHAIR: Mr Brooks, in your previous evidence you mentioned that, in the planning process, the acousticians who were engaged by the proponents were the same acousticians who then later corrected, shall we say, their own work. Have you seen this in any other field in your professional career?

Mr Brooks: I used to teach English literature, so this sort of issue would not have come up except, as I said, in the case of examiners. Usually, you have to have quite a separation of powers between people who are helping the student and people who are doing the examination. In the case of a PhD, for example, the examiners cannot even belong to the same university; they have to be from a different university.

To come back to the noise compliance monitoring business, it is the same company that does the compliance monitoring. For example, in the case of Gullen Range, it was Marshall Day Acoustics. Whether they literally used the same individuals, I have no idea; but it was certainly the same company.

The other thing that is a bit dubious about the compliance monitoring is that it is to be done only at the same residences where the original background noise monitoring was done. In the case of Gullen Range, at the time there were 63 noninvolved residences within two kilometres, and Marshall Day Acoustics chose, I think, 17 at which to do the original background noise monitoring. So the compliance noise monitoring, now that the wind farm is built, is going to be done at those same 17 residences. It will not be done at all 63. It certainly will not be done anywhere outside two kilometres.

The other thing—and I think this is really the crucial point—is that both the original background noise monitoring and the compliance noise monitoring, and any additional noise audits that the Minister for Planning might order, are all going to be done in terms of the noise limits and the conditions of consent which are based on the South Australian noise guidelines. I had the asset manager from the wind farm come to my house. He sat down in my lounge room. He was going through this spiel about how concerned they were, how they wanted to help people and so on, and I said to him quite plainly, ‘Look, you’re not going to do anything you’re not legally obliged to do, are you,’ and he said no. I said, ‘You’re not going to test for infrasound, are you,’ and he said no. I said, ‘You’re not going to test for low-frequency noise, are you,’ and he said no. So we know, even before the compliance noise monitoring happens, that it is going to be inadequate.

CHAIR: Thank you, Mr Brooks.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Dr Crawford, I have a question similar to what Senator Day asked you before. You have done a lot of consulting to business. It occurs to me that if this were any other industry about which accusations were being made, assuming that it felt that those accusations were unfounded, it would want to do everything it could to put them to bed, disprove them—say, ‘We don’t think there’s any credibility to these accusations but let’s do something to stamp them out.’ I cannot think of any other industry that would not take that approach. The wind industry does not take that approach. Have you seen anything similar in any other sector?

Dr Crawford: Sure. All industries want ultimately to be seen to be good citizens. Sometimes they do it by actually being good citizens and sometimes they do it by suppressing any contrary evidence. I think we have seen at least two other examples: the tobacco industry, whose history is essentially the same as this; and the asbestos industry in Australia, where the companies involved tried first to hide the involvement of asbestos in the harm it was causing and then to arrange their assets in such a way that they protected shareholders against those who might have claims on them. We are in a society where directors of companies typically believe that their responsibility is primarily to maximise value for their shareholders. They do that within the bounds of the law. If the law allows them to behave in ways, as it does in this case, that harm other people, then they typically believe that it is their obligation to do so. We have seen that certainly in the tobacco industry and in the asbestos industry in Australia.

Senator LEYONHJELM: I have speculated that one day there may be a class action similar to those that have occurred in the tobacco industry and the asbestos industry in which the wind industry is found liable in tort. Do you anticipate that possibility as well?

Dr Crawford: I certainly think it is likely that a number of parties will eventually go that route. Obviously as the industry grows it brings more people into harm and grows the number of people who will do so. One of the issues, of course, is which of those companies will still be alive when that occurs. Whilst there are some major companies that have probably a long life ahead of them, there are also a number of other companies in the industry that will have passed off their responsibilities to someone else. If there is a claim down the track, they will not be the ones who have to field it.

CHAIR: Thank you all for appearing here to today and for your evidence.

Hansard, 29 May June 2015

Mr Brooks, Dr Crawford, Mr Lyons and Mr Tominson’s evidence is available from the Parliament’s website here.

Global Warming Alarmists….Government-induced climaphobia…The Grand Hoax!

July 13, 2015July 13, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

JULY 2015 RELEASE — NOBEL LAUREATE SMASHES THE GLOBAL WARMING HOAX

Nobel laureate Ivar Giaever’s speech at the Nobel Laureates meeting 1st July 2015. In the video, he points out not-well known facts about the climate.

(From Donna — Just as a side note, the next time you’re in a debate with one of the faithful members of the Church of Global Warming, see if they can answer all of these questions. Find out how well they truly ‘know’ the science. I’ve been asking people these questions for a while now, and they never have the answer. I found it funny that this gentleman asks one of the same questions. You’ll notice which one it is.)

So to all of those devout members of the Church of Global Warming, answer these questions for me.
What is the optimum temperature, for all species, including man, to thrive?
What is the maximum population of humans that is acceptable?
What is the perfect combination of GHGs in the atmosphere??
What is the perfect level of humidity?
What is the optimum amount of annual rainfall, globally? For extra bonus points,
break it down by continent.
What is the perfect size for both polar ice caps?
What’s the optimum size for a glacier….at what point should it stop growing or shrinking?
What is the perfect ph level for every ocean, for all marine life, for all coral, for all marine algae and plant life to flourish?
What’s the optimum perfect sea level?
What is the maximum amount of volcanic ash and soot that can be shot into the atmosphere before it starts to affect the climate?
What is the maximum number of severe storms — hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoes — that you feel are acceptable? What’s the highest category allowed?
Tell all of us deniers what the absolute perfect climate is, so that no species ever goes extinct again, so that all flora and fauna flourish, so that we can tell the earth to stop changing her climate….something she’s done naturally for billions of years…..and stay at exactly the levels that you have decreed to be perfect for all life on planet earth.)

Windweasels Take a Much-Deserved Beating, At The Hands of the Wonderful Aussies!!

July 13, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

ARREA Spears Wind Industry’s Parasites During Thumping Senate Appearance

July 13, 2015 by stopthesethings

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The mandatory RET has seen the cost of around $9 billion worth of Renewable Energy Certificates added to retail power prices and recovered from all Australian power consumers.

Under the Large-Scale Renewable Energy Target, a further $45 billion is designed to be transferred from power consumers to wind power outfits via the REC Tax/Subsidy over the next 17 years:

Wind Power Fraud Finally Exposed: Senator John Madigan Details LRET’s Astronomical 45 Billion Dollar Cost to Power Consumers

The latest LRET deal was struck by the Coalition’s wind industry front men, Ian “Macca” Macfarlane and his youthful ward, Gregory Hunt for no other purpose than saving their mates at Infigen, Vestas & Co – and is doomed to fail, in any event (see our posts here and here).

With that phenomenal cost being added to already spiralling power bills – there will be many more households who will be unable to afford power; adding to the tens of thousands of homes already deprived of what was once a basic necessity of (a decent) life. And thousands more destined to suffer “energy poverty” as they find themselves forced to choose between heating (or cooling) and eating:

Victoria’s Wind Rush sees 34,000 Households Chopped from the Power Grid

Casualties of South Australia’s Wind Power Debacle Mount: Thousands Can’t Afford Power

If our political betters in Canberra don’t get a grip and line up to kill the LRET very soon – in less than a decade – Australia will have created an entrenched energy underclass, dividing Australian society into energy “haves” and “have-nots”.

For a taste of an escalating social welfare disaster, here are articles from Queensland (click here); Victoria (click here); South Australia (click here); and New South Wales (click here).

There’s something deeply troubling about thousands of Australian households descending into gloom after dark – unable to afford the power needed for electric lighting; or troubling, at least, for those with a social conscience.

The ONLY justification for the massive stream of subsidies filched from power consumers and directed to wind power outfits is the claim that wind power reduces CO2 emissions in the electricity sector and, therefore, provides a solution to climate change (or what used to be called “global warming”). The former proposition is a proven fallacy (seeour post here). And, because the planet hasn’t reached boiling point (in bitter defiance of the IPCC’s models), the once concrete relationship between CO2 emissions and increasing global temperature now seems murky, at best.

Claiming the “global warming” moral high ground, wind power proponents continue to blindly chant the mantra that wind power reduces CO2 emissions – although they rarely, if ever, talk about the actual cost of the claimed reductions. Probably because there are, in fact, no reductions.

STT has focused on the fact that industrial scale wind power does not – and will never – reduce CO2 emissions simply because it is intermittent; being delivered at crazy, random intervals, such that 100% of its capacity must be backed up 100% of the time by fossil fuel generation sources (see our post here). Accordingly, we call it an environmental fraud.

Because wind power fails to deliver on its primary claim (and the wind industry’s only reason for existence) the $billions in subsidies purloined from taxpayers and power consumers have been received on an utterly false premise. Accordingly, we call it an economic fraud. Wind power, whichever way you slice it, is not, and will never be, a meaningful power generation source.

With that in mind, power consumers and taxpayers are clearly entitled to ask whether the subsidies received by wind power generators represent a cost-effective means of reducing CO2 emissions; if, indeed, there is any such reduction at all.

One such group is the Association for Research of Renewable Energy in Australia (ARREA): a band of hard-hitting, pro-farming and pro-community advocates, with a mission to ensure Australia gets the sensible energy policy it needs. Rather than the present policy fiasco, foisted on power consumers and rural communities by eco-fascist nutjobs – that wouldn’t know the first thing about markets and/or power generation – and the rent-seekers from the wind industry and its parasites that profit from the useful idiots they pay handsomely to run cover on their behalf: like yes2-ruining-us, GetUp!, the Climate Speculator and ruin-economy.

On that score, ARREA went hell-for-leather in an effort to put some of the real facts before the Senate Inquiry into the great wind power fraud.

ARREA lobbed a cracking submission before the Committee – available here: sub372_ARREA

In its submission ARREA has a very solid crack at the most colossal industry subsidy scheme in the history of the Commonwealth; and the fact that, despite the ridiculous cost of the LRET (originally set up as a $3.8 billion a year subsidy for wind power – but – under the latest 33,000 GWh target – a mere ‘snip’ at $3 billion annually), there has never been any cost/benefit analysis of the policy in its 15 years of operation.

ARREA also takes a well-aimed swipe at the ludicrous claims by the wind industry that each and every MWh of wind power dispatched to the grid results in the abatement (or reduction) of 1 tonne of CO2 gas in the electricity generation sector.

It’s that relationship that is said to justify – what Greg Hunt calls – the “massive $93 per tonne carbon tax” imposed on all Australian power consumers under the LRET (see our post here).

Under the LRET, a REC is issued for each MWh of wind power dispatched to the grid, on the assumption that it in fact reduces or abates 1 tonne of CO2, that would otherwise be emitted by a conventional generator. The figure of $93 talked about by Hunt as a 1 “tonne carbon tax” is the full cost of a REC, that will be reached when the shortfall penalty starts to apply: the full cost of the REC is added to retail power bills.

STT hears that young Greg has taken to arguing that there is no such assumption: his argument appears to be that a REC is issued for a MWh of wind power, irrespective of whether any CO2 is abated elsewhere in the electricity sector; which simply begs the question as to what Australians are getting for their $93 per MWh electricity tax? Hmmm …

ARREA’s submission also picks up on the work done by Dr Joseph Wheatley, a graduate of Trinity College Dublin with a PhD in condensed matter physics from Princeton University:

Wind Industry’s CO2 Abatement Claims Smashed by Top Physics Professor – Dr Joseph Wheatley

ARREA’s top operatives, Doug Bucknell, Mark Glover and Sam McGuiness fronted up to the Inquiry to continue their attack on the greatest economic and environmental fraud of all time.

Senate Select Committee on Wind Turbines – 29 May 2015

BUCKNELL, Mr Lionel Douglas Wentworth (Douglas), Member, Association for Research of Renewable Energy in Australia Ltd

GLOVER, Mr Mark Berry, Member, Association for Research of Renewable Energy in Australia Ltd

McGUINESS, Mr Sam, Member, Association for Research of Renewable Energy in Australia Ltd

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

Mr Bucknell: Yes.

Mr Glover: Yes.

Mr McGuiness: Yes.

CHAIR: The committee has your submission. I 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.

Mr Bucknell: Thank you. First I congratulate you on the conduct of this inquiry. We have been engaged observers at public hearings and have intently followed your progress, including the interim report and the wind turbine commissioner proposal. Your work here will last on the public record and be proven over time to have added a great deal to the public understanding around wind turbines and their relative value or otherwise. In our view, you have covered the detail and the terms of reference items with one major exception, and that is why we are here today.

The ARREA submission directly addresses that missing point, which is the economic impact of wind turbines, including the associated matters on how effective the Clean Energy Regulator has been, the adequacy of monitoring, the energy and emission input and output equations and related matters. This issue is fundamental. It goes to the very heart of what the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000, the act, is supposed to be doing. Specifically, if the second object of the act, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and the third object being ecologically sustainable are to be met, the encouragement of additional generation, which is the first object, must be achieved by displacing thermal production. In order to assess the economic impact, historical performance data is crucial and a fundamental benchmark. Under the current regime adopted by the CER, it appears that no real effort has been made to verify the claims by the wind industry as to the actual performance of wind turbines as they relate to the fundamental task of reducing greenhouse gases in the electricity sector.

This is why we, ARREA, commissioned the Wheatley study to independently investigate the effectiveness of wind power in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation in Australia during 2014, using actual empirical five-minute data from each of the grid-connected generators. We were at the Joe Wheatley teleconference you held in Canberra. We are not here to revisit the technical detail. That is why we and you got the expert in. However, we are here to focus on the outcome, to connect the dots, to explain why this is important to the terms of reference and your final report recommendations.

As a headline reminder, analysis of the actual data in the NEM in 2014 shows that wind power production has overstated the emission reductions by 22 per cent—that is, 100 per cent minus 78. It is 22 per cent overstated. This percentage will continue to increase as the percentage of wind power entering the NEM increases. The current lack of performance measurement is just not acceptable. It would not be tolerated in any other industry, let alone one reliant on mandated subsidies. It should not be up to entities like ARREA to commission this independent research. Performance measurement should be a fundamental and first step in any oversight regime, particularly where taxpayers’ funds and electricity consumers are involved. The CER should have independently commissioned this research, or the Senate, or perhaps in the future the wind turbine commissioner. The CER should be admonished for this failure to properly monitor the true impact of an industry which comes at a high cost to the nation’s economy and electricity consumers in particular.

Many are asking: is this regulator asleep at the wheel? Do we have another HIH royal commission occurring here? Or do they already have the information but are not releasing it? Senators should be concerned about the impact that this lack of measurement has on the CER fulfilling its responsibilities under the act and regulation. There are financial flow-on impacts to electricity consumers and in respect of public moneys received by inappropriately issued RECs. The issue of CER’s effectiveness exists regardless of your political views, regardless of whether you like or dislike wind turbines and regardless of the environmental and social impact issues. This is a public accountability issue. We are urging all to make a joint recommendation on this matter, and that involves an audit of the CER.

In 2014 electricity consumers effectively paid wind farms $100 for emissions reduction and they got only $78 worth of value. The dollar value of these certificates that did not lead to a reduction in emissions was estimated at $70 million in 2014 alone. What is more, it will get worse year by year as more turbines are installed. This 22 per cent or $70 million in ineffective wind production is not ecologically sustainable as defined by the act. The act’s definition of ‘ecologically sustainable’ includes ‘promoting improved valuation, pricing and incentive mechanisms’. That is the act’s definition. Including the 22 per cent ineffective wind production is clearly not consistent with this principle. In particular, it clearly distorts valuation and pricing and creates unjustified incentives. Under regulation 15A(a) electricity omitted from this calculation includes ‘electricity that was generated by using an eligible renewable energy source that is not ecologically sustainable’. Let me restate that: electricity produced by a wind turbine that is not ecologically sustainable cannot be counted. They cannot issue RECs for it.

The approach taken above is what parliament intended for regulation 15A(a). The issue was also the core of the amending act—the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Amendment Act 2006—with the explanatory statement saying that it would:

… enhance market transparency and improve business certainty, provide increased opportunities for solar and bioenergy technologies, and improve the operational effectiveness and efficiency of the Act.

The Wheatley research has now clearly established using the actual empirical 2014 data that 22 per cent of the electricity generated by wind as the eligible renewable energy source in 2014 was not ecologically sustainable and should not have received RECs.

No-one likes being ripped off, but what is worse is when the gatekeeper, the regulator, the CER, is complicit or is turning a blind eye. Please do not add insult to injury to your electors by ignoring this problem, which is only set to get worse. Senator Back has repeatedly asked the CER for details on regulation 15A(a). The CER has responded to those questions, including on notice, with answers relating to other regulations, including regulation 15A and 15A(b). They have tried to answer using ineligible energy sources, which is regulation 15 and not relevant to the question asked. It appears as though the CER is avoiding answering the question or making up its own legislative rules.

ARREA believes renewable energy is very important for the sustainability of Australia’s future. However, the current policy settings in regard to wind turbines are flawed. Their implementation has led to systemic failure. The simple production of electricity from wind, subsidised or otherwise, to the extent that it does not effectively offset thermal production does not serve any material economic purpose. It duplicates electricity production, distorts market signals, especially compared to other renewable energy sources such as solar, and leads to inappropriate public perceptions about the value of wind power, to the detriment of the long-term sustainability of our nation.

Our recommendations as per our report stand, and those recommendations are that this committee:

Receive the full Phase 1 report—CO2 Emissions Savings from Wind Power in the National Electricity Market (NEM), by Dr Joseph Wheatley, Biospherica Risk Ltd, Ireland.
Obtain an assurance from the CER that nominated persons—the wind energy companies—will be advised of the need to apply, consistent with the Act and its regulations, a 0.78:1 relationship when issuing certificates.
Confirm that the Regulator will use its powers under the Act, including Part 15A Civil Penalty Orders and/or Enforceable Undertaking under S15B, to uphold the purposes of the Act.
Seek that the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO), conduct a performance audit on the CER’s compliance with its role under the legislation. In particular:
1. What information did the CER hold on wind effectiveness in offsetting CO2 emissions at both 30 June 2014 (end of financial year) and 3 May 2015?
2. What Risk Management and Fraud Mitigation practices and processes are in place, have they been appropriate? If not, who should be held responsible and what rectification actions is required.
3. If all public monies collected in respect of the Act are appropriate.
4. If there are financial or other incentives, including but not limited to, the collection of public monies under the Act that are distorting the CER’s role in achieving the Objects of the Act.
5. If the expenditure of public monies by the CER has been appropriately focused on achieving the Acts objects.

CHAIR: Thank you, Mr Bucknell.

Senator LEYONHJELM: I read your report yesterday, at the end of 550 other pages.

Mr Bucknell: Thank you, Senator.

Senator LEYONHJELM: If my questions were answered in your submission, that is the reason: it has gone in one eye and out the other. I assume the 0.78 ratio which I think you mentioned is attributable to spinning reserve. Is it?

Mr Glover: Can I just answer that one. The Wheatley report basically showed that wind power supplied 4½ per cent of system demand in 2014 but only reduced CO2 emissions by 3½ per cent. Wind power generation is intermittent; in fact, in Australia it fails completely over 100 times a year. The grid must supply sufficient power at all times, and therefore, when the wind is blowing, backup power must be available at all times. In practice, a significant fraction of South Australia’s wind power displaces low-emissions gas generation within South Australia, and in fact in New South Wales we are importing power from South Australia and it is displacing black coal. The dirtiest power of all is brown coal. That is not being displaced at all by wind power generation.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Yes, but the explanation for the 0.78 is this backup that you are referring to?

Mr Glover: He did not measure spinning reserves or cycling. That is not even included in that. In fact, if we go forward, if we can get more data—in the back of Wheatley’s report he lists his requirements—I think that 22 per cent inefficiency will actually become greater, because that was not measured.

Mr Bucknell: If your direct question is in relation to 0.78, 0.45 production by wind only offsets 0.35 in emissions. If you divide one by the other, you get 0.78.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Have you compared that to solar, geothermal and hydro?

Mr Glover: We have not done the studies there. To an extent, what solar is actually doing is reducing demand on the grid. Households that are running on solar reduce the total demand on the grid, so it is a lot harder to measure, because we do not know how much solar is being produced at any one point in time.

Senator LEYONHJELM: I was talking about large-scale solar.

Mr Glover: No, we have not scoped that.

Senator LEYONHJELM: Are you confident that the ANAO is the appropriate organisation to investigate the performance of the Clean Energy Regulator? My impression is that it is primarily concerned with accuracy of financial accounts.

Mr Bucknell: That is correct. There are two types of audits: there are financial accounts audits and there are performance audits. The audit that we are asking for is an audit of the correspondence that is held within the CER, particularly in relation to regulation 15A(a). Why have we got to the point we have got to? Why is this 22 per cent currently being counted? Why is it currently a one to one relationship? When RECs are issued, there are public moneys that are received by the CER, so it is a financial and a performance issue. We think the ANAO is set up to do those types of audits. This is not an unusual request; it is simply a request for an audit.

Senator URQUHART: Thanks very much, Mr Bucknell. How many members does ARREA have?

Mr Bucknell: Seven.

Senator URQUHART: How do you go about becoming a member? I have looked for you on the internet. I cannot find a street address, a website or a Facebook page, so how do you—

Mr Bucknell: We are a public company that has been registered for a number of years. In fact, I can give you some details on that. You are offered membership by the organisation, and we are on the public record.

Senator URQUHART: Okay, but you do not have a website, a street address or a Facebook page? I have not been able to find any.

Mr Bucknell: No.

Senator URQUHART: Can you describe the structure of your organisation. Who are the key personnel?

Mr Bucknell: The three directors are on the public record. We have seven members, as we have described. We are an organisation who are most concerned about ensuring that renewable energy in Australia and the decarbonisation of the Australian economy are done in the most efficient and effective way. That is why we have raised funds to have the Wheatley research done.

Senator URQUHART: I understand that spokespeople for your organisation are Tony Hodgson and Rod Pahl—is that correct? And they were also spokespeople for an opponent wind group called Friends of Collector—is that right?

Mr Bucknell: I understand that to be correct.

Senator URQUHART: You said that you have not received any research grants and that you raised that money yourselves through your organisation.

Mr Bucknell: That is correct. These are privately raised funds. As I said in my opening statement, we think this is research that should have been done independently by the CER or by the Senate. Public moneys should have been used and, in our view, they should be admonished for the fact that they have not done that research, because it is required in order for them to be able to know how many certificates should be issued underneath the act.

Senator URQUHART: Do any of the key office holders within your association have any research qualifications?

Mr Glover: No, I do not think so. We have a number of people in the organisation with a number of different skills. I am actually a qualified geologist, so I have a scientific background. Mr Bucknell used to work for APRA, so he knows how the regulators work. I was also the Australian country treasurer for the Bank of America Merrill Lynch for over 10 years, so I have a strong background in banking. We have backgrounds in PR, economists and stuff like that who are all members. It is a broad background.

Mr McGuiness: I have been a farmer for 29 years and I have dealt with parasites most of that time, so I am pretty well qualified in this area too.

Senator URQUHART: I presume you mean parasites on the backs of sheep or cattle.

Mr McGuiness: Just all parasites. There are an awful lot.

Senator URQUHART: Aside from the work that you commissioned Joseph Wheatley to do, what other research have ARREA undertaken? Have you undertaken any other research or is it just the work that you commissioned Joe Wheatley to do?

Mr McGuiness: That is the only commissioned work that we have done so far. There are other works to do with waste to energy. Part of our group is looking into stand-alone solar as well, especially in regional areas.

Senator URQUHART: You are looking at doing some research into that?

Mr McGuiness: Absolutely.

Mr Bucknell: And we made a submission in relation to the review of the renewable energy target.

Senator URQUHART: Thank you very much.

CHAIR: Gentlemen, in order to accurately measure CO2 abatement going forward and the concerns that you have raised, what additional data and resources are required, do you believe?

Mr Glover: The Wheatley report, as I said earlier, omitted start-up and power plant cycling. CO2 emissions were not calculated for power stations not despatching electricity to the grid. Most coal fired power stations are at their most efficient when running at 100 per cent capacity. As this capacity is reduced, CO2 emissions per megawatt hour rise. If this reduction in capacity is due to wind power generation entering the grid, this increase in CO2 inefficiency needs to be measured. The input data needs to be improved with actual fuel use data by individual generators at short time intervals, preferably five-minute time intervals. An emissions parameter for individual generators is required to include zero load energy consumption data, that is when they are not producing, incremental heat rate slopes—this is starting to get into the engineering side—start-up energy costs and thermal relaxation times. Obviously, if you shut a power station down because wind power comes on, the coal is still burning, the heat has to dissipate out of that power station and CO2 is still being produced.

This data will help measure efficiency of generators at different capacity points, as well as measure CO2 emissions when these generators are not supplying electricity. In many cases these coal fired power stations are on standby, where they are burning coal but not supplying electricity—in essence, waiting for the wind to drop. As we have stated, there have been other reports done that I think show the whole wind power fleet in Australia switches off 130 times a year. The other thing required is: both ‘sent out’ data and ‘as generated’ data are needed for each generator. ‘As generated’ data basically includes the power used in the generation process, whereas ‘sent out’ is the actual power delivered to the grid. Obviously, there is a certain amount of electricity used within the plant; that needs to be picked up as well.

We are proposing that a detailed multi-year CO2 abatement study is needed to reduce the statistical uncertainty and provide clear information about the variability of wind power effectiveness. I suppose really what we are suggesting is that the Clean Energy Regulator would probably need to create a full-time position to properly calculate these CO2 emissions. The computing power is there to do it on a five-minute basis, if we can get the real fuel feed in data and all the other engineering data for each generator. I think it is probably a full-time job for one person.

Mr McGuiness: What happens is: to start a coal fired power station, they might use up to 35,000 or 40,000 litres of diesel to get it up to an operating temperature. This is a small one—say, a 150 megawatt one. When you get it up to temperature—and I will use an example of one that I know a little bit about in the Hunter—that consumes 80 tonnes per hour of coal to keep it ticking along. It might not be generating any electricity, but you cannot stop feeding it coal. They have to have a thermal efficiency where they do not crack and heat and cool down; otherwise they break. Then it gets a bit complicated. You have thermal reserve, where it is hot and generating a small amount of steam. It uses a thermal generator. Then you have spinning reserve, where it is spinning, and then you have spinning reserve that is synchronised to the grid. Basically you just dump the clutch and she is jamming sparks into the grid. All of those have to stay warm the whole time. You only shut a big thermal generator down if you have a breakdown or a maintenance schedule. These people are scheduled generators. They schedule into the grid to supply electricity 12 to 18 months ahead of when they actually generate. When wind comes into the system, they pull down—but only for a very short period of time. They have to be sitting there so, if something happens, that spinning reserve is ready to drop into the grid.

So there are thermal reserves and spinning reserves. The emissions on those, because they are not generating into the grid at the time, are not necessarily calculated. If we got the correct data and the government did the correct job and got their legislation so it worked, rather than nice and fluffy at the moment, you would get some real evidence of what is going on—and then you would be fair dinkum about getting results.

Mr Glover: Interestingly, under the last carbon tax regime, you only paid a carbon tax when you were supplying electricity to the grid. There was no carbon tax charged if you just happened to be burning coal and not supplying electricity.

Senator DAY: Could you just elaborate further, Mr Bucknell, on the difference between ecologically sustainable wind turbines and non-ecologically sustainable ones?

Mr Bucknell: Absolutely. I think this does go to the heart of a number of questions asked in relation to regulation 15 and regulation 15A. Regulation 15, which is how the CER answered the question on 15AA, relates to eligible and not eligible energy sources. For the record, wind farms do only use eligible renewable energy sources under the act, by definition, but it is not relevant to the question. They do not use any ineligible energy sources, but it is not relevant to the question of reg 15AA. Reg 15AA excludes electricity produced by a wind farm that is not ecologically sustainable. That is why the 22 per cent in 2014, and an increasing percentage in future years to probably 30-plus per cent, is not ecologically sustainable.

Perhaps I could just run through that a bit more clearly for you, if I can. ‘Ecologically sustainable’ is defined in the act. It means an action that is consistent with the following principles of ecologically sustainable development:

Decision-making processes should effectively integrate both long-term and short-term economic, environmental, social and equitable considerations.

That is point a). And then it goes on to b), which is irreversible environmental damage—not relevant. It goes on to intergenerational equity, which is not particularly relevant, and the conservation of biological diversity, which is not particularly relevant. But point e) is:

improved valuation, pricing and incentive mechanisms should be promoted.

Actions that improve valuation, pricing and incentive mechanisms are ecologically sustainable. Excluding the 22 per cent is ecologically sustainable. It is defined in the act. We just want them to do it.

CHAIR: There being no further questions, we thank you for your appearance here today before the committee.

Hansard, 29 May June 2015

Mr Bucknell’s, Mr Glover’s and Mr McGuiness’ evidence is available from the Parliament’s website here.

Silly German Windpushing Politicians….They can’t Say We Didn’t Warn Them!

July 12, 2015 / 1957chev / 2 Comments

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

July 12, 2015 by stopthesethings

Calamitous Planning: German Wind Parks Overload Power Grid … “At Its Limits” … Record 50,000 Grid Interventions In May!
NoTricksZone
Pierre Gosselin
1 July 2015

Online German NDR public radio here wrote last week how northern Germany’s power grid had suffered a major bottleneck that led to the overload of the Flensburg-Niebüll power transmission line in Schleswig Holstein last week.

North German transformer stations constantly overloaded by wind power. Photo image cropped here (not a German station, for illustration only).

The overload resulted from a power surge from North Sea wind parks when winds picked up a bit. What is unusual in this case, however, is that there was no storm present and the overload was caused by normal wind fluctuations. Thus the incident illustrates the increasing volatility of wind as a power supply, even under regular weather conditions.

At its limits

It turns out that intervening in power grids to avert a widespread power supply breakdown is nothing new in Germany. NDR writes that nowadays power engineer Stefan Hackbusch at the grid’s control center in Northern German increasingly has to intervene even when there are even moderate breezes. The north German public radio media outlet writes: “Because of the strong growth in wind park installations, the power grid up north is at its limits.”

Intervened 50,000 times in May

As winds pick up with little warning, engineers at control centers constantly have to keep a close eye out and be ready to act at a minute’s notice and intervene if the power surges (or drops) to dangerous limits. To prevent overloading of the grid, control centers often have to shut down wind parks until the power supply moves into a safe range. These unplanned wind park shutdowns are occurring more and more often, NDR writes. “Switching off has become much more frequent the workers at the control center confirm. Transformer stations in Schleswig-Holstein had to have their output reduced 50,000 times in May – a record.”

“Waste electricity” skyrocketing

Not only is grid stability a problem, but “waste power” is also growing astronomically, NDR writes, citing the Bundesnetzagentur (German Network Agency), that 555 gigawatt-hrs of renewable power went unused in 2013 because of overloading and the surplus had to be discarded. The trend of “waste electricity” is skyrocketing, NDR writes.

According to the provisions of Germany’s EEG renewable energy feed-in act, waste electricity still needs to be paid for, which means that consumers foot a bill for something that is never delivered. Consumers are also required to pay for the electricity that doesn’t get produced when a wind park gets shut down. Wind park operators get paid whether they feed in or not.

Grid bottleneck dampens new installations

One solution for the German grid overloading from the uncontrollable wind and sun sources would be to vastly expand the German national power grid so that wind power produced near the North and Baltic seas power could get transmitted to the industrial south, where demand is big.

But here too the costs of building the such transmission power lines are astronomical and permitting entails a bureaucratic mess.

Moreover political opposition against these lines is mounting rapidly. Experts say that the earliest, most optimistic completion date for a major power transmission expansion is 2022. This however is now looking totally unrealistic, as pie in the sky.

With the German grid often becoming hopelessly overloaded and with no real expansion in sight, the future looks bleak for wind and solar power systems suppliers.

With no place to send the power, there’s no need for new installations. Orders and contracts for new projects have been drying up and wind and solar companies are now being hit hard.
NoTricksZone

What appears above isn’t exclusive to Germany, it’s part and parcel of trying to integrate an entirely weather dependent generation “system” into electricity grids designed to operate in a steady, stable state; and that includes Australia.

In the video that follows, an electrical engineer, Andrew Dodson explains – in somewhat technical terms – the lunacy of trying to distribute wind power via a grid deliberately designed around on-demand generation sources. STT recommends it to anyone with even the vaguest interest in how our electrical grid works.

At the simplest level, think of our distribution grid as akin to a mains water distribution system. In order to function, the pipes in such a system need to be filled at all times with a volume of water equal to their capacity and, in order to flow in the direction of a user, the water within the pipes needs to be maintained at a constant pressure.

Where a household turns on a tap, water flows out of the tap (in electrical terms “the load”); at the other end an equal volume of water is fed into the system and pumps fire up to maintain the pressure within it (although gravity often does the work).

In a similar fashion, an electricity grid can only function with the required volume of electricity within it; maintained at a constant pressure (voltage) and frequency (hertz) – all of which fluctuate, depending on the load and the input.

What Andrew Dodson makes crystal clear is that these essential certainties (essential, that is, to maintaining a stable and functioning electricity grid) have been tipped on their head by the chaos that is wind power.

What Andrew has to say about wind power, in general, has special pertinence to Australians; given the fact that our Coalition government has just locked in a $45 billion electricity tax – which is to be directed at wind power outfits; and for no other purpose than to help them spear another 2,500 of these things all over the country.

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