David Hansen wrote:
On Mon, 25 Oct 2010 12:23:14 +0100 someone who may be John Rumm
wrote this:-

It almost certainly does not include the
infrastructure build out to make the thing accessible and maintainable,

I conclude that you have not even bothered to skim the references.
They are easy to find, but here is a clue
http://www.vestas.com/en/about-vestas/sustainability/wind-turbines-and-the-environment/life-cycle-assessment-%28lca%29.aspx.

Taking the V30 report, as it is for the largest turbine.

If you mean the roads then they are ignored as they are negligible.
However, the travel of the maintenance staff is not negligible, so
is included.

or that required for grid connection.

The cables within the wind farm are included. Those outwith it are
not, neither would they be for any other form of generation.


Indeed, but conventional forms of generation have high *constant*
output, by and large. Only wind and solar are totally unable to operate
in any sort of either base load or dispatchable mode.


Load average on a wind farm is meaningless to compare with load average
on conventional power.

Load average on conventional power means how much of the time its
generating a fixed steady output.

And how much time its down for refuelling or maintenance, or because its
not needed.

Load average on a windfarm is merely the average of a totally randomly
and fast slewing output.

No one else has to build a long distance connector capable of three
times the load average of their power station, just to take what MIGHT
be available. Or not. Ata 30% load average transmission lie shave to nbe
three times teh size of teh actual power genearted,



It also ignores conventional power
station the spinning reserve.

Spinning reserve would still exist even if all wind turbines were
dismantled this afternoon. You are repeating the refuted "wind farms
must have dedicated 100% backup" line.

They do have to have that much,. Not all spinning I grant you, but as I
have repeatedly shown you the calculations for, the fact of having to
operate conventional stations in highly dispatchable mode negates pretty
much all of te carbon gains allegedly made by having them, and i ertain
cases makes the whole exercise carbon positive




It is true that fossil fuel fired stations will have their output
varied more often with wind on the system. The amount of increased
emissions this causes are negligible in comparison to the reduction
of emissions having wind causes.

No, the best estimate was that 50% gains were lost, the worst estimates
have it that windfarms increase fossil fuel consumption overall.


A few percent of the savings. It
has all been studied http://www.ukerc.ac.uk/support/Intermittency.


Those studies only address costs: Nowhere do they address carbon reduction.

More spin and evasion from the wind lobby.

Just look here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...s_per_ capita

and you will see that Germany and Denmark, the most enthusiastic and
wide adopters of windpower, do no better than the UK in terms of per
capita carbon emission.

Nor has it fallen much since the adoption of windpower.

If windpower gains were so great, Denmark with potentially more
windpower capacity than its electrical grid needs, by some margin,
should have shown a 30% reduction in carbon emissions. Assuming like the
UK that 30% of the fuel burn goes to electricity.


The UK is already generating less CO2 per capita than Denmark. Probably
because we have nuclear power. France is very low. Guess what. It has
enough nuclear capacity to generate nearly all its needs that way.
Sweden is very low. It has hydro power. Iceland has geothermal. Both low.


The fact is that massive deployment of windpower has saved little or no
carbon emissions whatsoever wherever its been deployed.

The german and Danish conclusions are that it has saved none whatsoever
- all reductions in CO2 they have made are by other means - better
conventional stations and fuel efficiency measures.


Energy efficiency makes infinitely more difference: Viz the great
difference between the US and the European countries.

In short windpower is not green at all. Its basically a fraud.