Windmills Sit Becalmed

 

becalmed, adjective

  1. (of a sailing ship) unable to move due to lack of wind
  2. rendered motionless for lack of wind

If the wind stops blowing, your ship stops moving. So do windmills. England, formerly a seagoing nation, once understood this.

Via Powerline, I see this excellent article in The Telegraph. The wind stopped blowing, so the windmills sit becalmed. Hence, the government will pay those who turn off their appliances. The term becalmed is terribly old-fashioned, so they came up with a new one: Demand Flexibility Service.

The boffins calculated how much windmill capacity was needed to run the country, and then built it. This freed them up to close fossil fuel and nuclear plants. But…

Britain already has enough installed wind and solar capacity – 38 gigawatts of it – to theoretically meet 100 per cent of average electricity demand. On a good day, such as we had a fortnight ago, solar and wind generate more than 50 per cent of our energy needs. But this morning at 10 am it was down to 19 per cent, and at times in December it fell to less than two per cent. If you are going to try to build a grid based on wind and solar, and try to manage demand by paying people to switch their appliances off, you are going to have to chuck such enormous quantities of money at people that they are prepared to spend days on end shivering in the dark.

I think I’ve got this right; when the wind doesn’t blow, they can burn tax money instead.

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There are 5 comments.

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  1. Not a Gubmint Spy Member
    Not a Gubmint Spy
    @OldDanRhody

    It’s can’t be the fault of the experts.  It must be the populace.  Surely they’ve done something to anger the magical wind and solar faries.

    • #1
  2. Old Bathos Member
    Old Bathos
    @OldBathos

    The Davosie now use the phrase “decarbonization and energy security” to blur the egregious downside of the former while creating the fiction that windmills and solar panels are secure and reliable.  It is insane.

    • #2
  3. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    • #3
  4. Metalheaddoc Member
    Metalheaddoc
    @Metalheaddoc

    I wouldn’t mind the wind and solar if they presented it as something to add to the energy mix. When they say they want to replace all fossil fuels with solar/wind, everyone knows it’s BS because everyone…EVERYONE…has experienced a calm windless day and that crazy nightly occurence called…darkness. If they would just pitch is as forms of energy that can take the load off conventional forms of energy (i.e. fossil fuels) then it would be much more palatable.  Tell me that when the sun is blazing and everyone is running their A/C, why not offset the energy use by capturing the solar energy that is making it hot, well that just sounds like common sense. But the demonization of conventional energy and the demand it must be replaced with Clean/Pure/Holy/Sanctified forms of energy is just nonsensical and everyone knows it. 

    • #4
  5. CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill
    @CarolJoy

    Ignore This! (View Comment):

    It’s can’t be the fault of the experts. It must be the populace. Surely they’ve done something to anger the magical wind and solar faries.

    It does appear that we have gone full circle.

    When any of the various King Henries of England lost a major battle  with France, the entire populace assumed that the king had done something which God found to be unspeakable. So in several cases, the king assumed his need to don sack cloth and ash and would do penance on the steps of the local Catholic Church. All done in order  to make things right with God.

    Now we have an entire program related to providing our nation with energy for businesses, individuals and last but not least, the military based on completely erroneous “fairy-dust” calculations.

    Of course the calculations are not at all erroneous if the real purpose of such is the Great Reset and the culling of humanity.

     

    • #5
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