2023-06-26
It's only when it hits us in the pocket that we take note.
As if it hasn't hit us hard enough yet in the pocket (despite years of unproductive subsidy), the wind farms are showing their true (lack of) mettle.
To engineers it probably isn't a surprise that a turbine that has to work safely and productively in multifarious wind conditions from storm-force to flat calm (not to mention similar directional variability, bird strikes etc) may exhibit reliability problems (ie: break down). They are subject to such wide and uncontrolled conditions of operation that failure is an ongoing problem. The latest news from manufacturer Siemens would seem to confirm this.
But will any of "our" representatives in Parliament and local government notice?
"The implications for the UK’s Net Zero policy, built around an assumption of ever cheaper wind power, are profound"
"The focus on renewables, and in particular on wind power, must now be seen as a disastrous mistake. We must row back, and quickly"
But I'm not so sure that the good professor is drawing the right conclusions here.
Yes the manufacturers are beginning to notice, but whilst the orders roll in, I suspect it will be simply a matter of rewording the contracts to ensure that the cost of failure falls on the public in future, no doubt under some other innocuous-sounding heading such as a "volatility balancing fund".
After all, this is exactly what they did for the vaccine manufacturers to relieve them of their obligations to keep the public safe, so why not for the turbine manufacturers? And if it's required to save the world, then no cost is too much to load on the hard-pressed tax-payers cash-cattle.
