Green Britain’s wind “power”

Wind power is the most common form of “green” energy in the world (largely because it is cheaper than solar). Great Britain in particular has hitched its future to wind power. Recently, they’ve experienced one of the fundamental and obvious problems with wind–the “intermittency problem,” i.e., that wind does not blow consistently and thus cannot be counted on–in particularly severe form.

As Briton Tom Mcghie writes in The Daily Mail,

In the last quarter ending December 23, wind turbines produced on average 8.6 per cent of our electricity, but the moment the latest bad weather arrived with snow and freezing temperatures, this figure fell to as low as 1.8 per cent.The slack was immediately taken up by efficient, but dirty, coal-fired power stations and oil-fired plants.

‘What is so worrying is that these sort of figures are not a one off,’ said Mr Nicholson. ‘It was exactly the same last January and February when high pressure brought freezing cold temperatures, snow and no wind.’

In fact last year, the failure of wind power to produce electricity was even more profound.

Then, over a few days, the lack of wind meant that only 0.2 per cent of a possible five per cent of the UK’s energy was generated by wind turbines.

Remember this next time Barack Obama or Thomas L. Friedman bemoans that we are “behind” Europe in “green energy.”

Image: Wikimedia Commons

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