The message
from David Hansen contains these words:

The uninformed might believe your statement indicates that there is
something different about wind turbines. However, it is a fact that
all forms of electricity generation do not produce 100% of their
rated output over a year.

Now that is a statement worthy of a religious fanatic.

Excellent, personal abuse.

No so. It was a statement of fact. However your remark above that
prompted mine does rank as abuse, abuse to all those fair minded folk
who can see through your squalid little ruse.

There is indeed a crucial difference between wind power and conventional
forms of generation. That is that while wind power is completely at the
mercy of the wind

We know from the work done by Oxford University that a distributed
set of wind farms will always be generating some electricity. Their
study just looked at land based wind farms by the way.

More obfuscation. Some doesn't have to be very much at all and at the
other end of the scale there are wind speeds that should prevent any
generation whatsoever.

Wind power is diffuse and variable, but that doesn't mean it is not
a useful way of generating large amounts of electricity. It is clear
that with current prices up to 20% of total generation can be by
wind without the need for expensive changes to the electrical
system.

You don't consider wind turbines as expensive changes to the electrical
system? No, of course not, just plant the turbine seedling and it will
grow into a fully functioning generator under the influence of nothing
more than water and sunlight.

There are plenty of detailed reports on this subject for those with
an open mind to read.

More personal abuse.

Of all the forms of 'free' energy wind is the least deserving of any
support. As you mention below hydro is already well established and in
the hillier parts of the UK it has much more scope for domestic use at
lower cost and much greater reliability. Tides are 100% reliable and
tidal power has the scope to dwarf the puny output of wind farms. And
even wave power is a better bet than wind power.

conventional generation can when needed produce 100%
of its rated output on demand at all times except during downtime for
maintenance or repair.

Incorrect. One of the ways that it is incorrect is that, like any
plant, "conventional" generation can suddenly fail without warning.
Small numbers of large power stations introduce greater
vulnerabilities into the system. At the moment the largest failure
to be guarded against is the sudden failure of Sizewell B, followed
by things like the line to France. Fortunately renewables are on
hand to help guard against such things, the rapid start ability of
hydro stations keeps the lights on many times a year during such
failures. They buy enough time to fix the problem or wind up some
other forms of generation.

That is no justification for claiming my statement was incorrect. You
need to think a little more deeply about what you are responding to.

I would be very interested to see a list of all those "many times a
year" failures that you claim hydro stations are protecting us from.

Incidentally while hydro schemes may indeed help in the event of a very
occasional major emergency at a large conventional power station wind
power would be a very uncertain element to rely on in any emergency.

--
Roger Chapman