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Many things are atrocious with wind power but one of the worst is that you don’t actually get any power out of them relatively speaking (any electrical benefit gained is essentially offset by the excess gas that is consumed since less efficient gas turbines have to be used to accommodate the rapid acceleration and deceleration rates that wind imposes on the system). I would urge all who are affected by the proliferation of this stupid idea to read this report from Prof Gordon Hughes from the UK entitled ‘Why is wind power so expensive?’ . It at least is a reasonably thorough analysis of the true cost of wind power.… http://www.thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/hughes-windpower.pdf

Here are a few highlights:  Meeting the UK Government’s target for renewable generation in 2020 will require total wind capacity of 36 GW backed up by 13 GW of open cycle gas plants plus large complementary investments in transmission capacity at a cost of about £120 billion.  The same electricity demand could be met from 21.5 GW of combined cycle gas plants with a cost of £13 billion, i.e. an order of magnitude cheaper than the wind scenario.  Under the most favourable assumptions for wind power, the Government’s wind policy will reduce emissions of CO2 at an average cost of £270 per metric ton (at 2009 prices) which means that meeting the UK’s renewable energy target would cost a staggering £78 billion per year in 2020. “The key problems with current policies for wind power are simple. They require a huge commitment of investment resources to a technology that is not very green, in the sense of saving a lot of CO2, but which is certainly very expensive and inflexible. Unless the current Government scales back its commitment to wind power very substantially, its policy will be worse than a mistake, it will be a blunder,” Professor Hughes said.