If you're having to ship in biomass material from the other side of the Atlantic for a mere 100MW power station, how much energy is actually being saved.
From Renewable Energy Foundation:-
Quote:
Wind power output is significantly variable and difficult to predict over several timescales, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years.
Variability over short time scales has been much discussed, and it is now well known that low wind conditions can prevail at times of peak load over very large areas. For example, at 17.30 on the 7th of December 2010, when the 4th highest United Kingdom load of 60,050 MW was recorded, the UK wind fleet of approximately 5,200 MW was producing about 300 MW (i.e. it had a Load Factor of 5.8%). One of the largest wind farms in the United Kingdom, the 322 MW Whitelee Wind Farm was producing approximately 5 MW (i.e. Load Factor 1.6%).
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Where is the missing 98.4% supposed to come from?
Quote:
Starting in 2005, the Renewable Energy Foundation (REF) commissioned a series of reports which have played a key role in this debate. These include the 2005 Telford Gold Medal winning papers by Hugh Sharman on the Danish wind experience2; the work published between 2006 and 2008 by James Oswald and his co-authors, which models the output of a 25 GW wind fleet distributed across the UK3; and the work of Paul-Frederik Bach on the impact of wind power intermittency on electricity spot prices, which was published in 2009 and 2010.
Oswald showed that, contrary to previous statistical work by the Environmental Change Institute (Oxford), smoothing of wind-generated electricity output would be modest at best, with the entire wind fleet functioning effectively as one power station, with frequent power ramps of significant scale and rapidity, and extended periods of near zero output, indicating that even a 25 GW wind power fleet produced little or no firm, or reliable, capacity. The Pöyry study is consistent with these results.
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If the wind drops even for a few seconds or minutes, you cannot suddenly start up generating capacity elsewhere, even if it was available.
Wind Turbines should not be the new Moai(statues on Easter Island), using up rare earth elements and creating jobs for NO ACTUAL PURPOSE.