A lot of hot air
Wind Power – The electricity Series Part 3
Fudging the figures
Remember when Bill Gates first started interviewing about Covid? In one interview he had a pile of books on the table next to him. The top book was titled ‘How to lie with statistics’. Our latest foray in to electricity is no different, though it might be more accurately labelled ‘How to fudge numbers when they are not readily accessible to the public’.
Electricity generation is a widely accepted necessity, but drilling down to the detail is confusing at best. Below we can see electricity flows from different sources to end consumer. 653.2 terrawatt hours (TWh) of power is used (22.4 TWh from imported energy, presumably from Europe) to create 308 TWh for the consumer.
The loss figure on the lower right of the diagram is made up of the raw products combusted in order to make the required electricity, including petroleum, other thermal sources, natural gas and coal. These raw materials total 296 TWh. Losses from conversion, transmission and distributions lies in the region of 49.1 TWh.
As the source document for this data states our consumption of electricity in 2020 is 330 TWh we will go with that figure for our calculations later on.
Stormy weather
The storms of early spring 2022 apparently saw exceptional performance from UK wind farms. According to the press, turbines produced a staggering 42% of total energy consumption during Storm Eunice on 18 February 2022. The press seemed to have missed, however, that wind farms have a cut-out wind speed between 44 and 55 miles per hour, in order to protect the integrity of the blades. This website provides cut-out speeds for a whole catalogue of wind turbine models across multiple brands. Turbines are considerably more exposed than trees and homes, given their height and positions on hillsides and in the ocean. Gusts were as strong as 122mph in the Isle of Wight.
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