Dutch fall out of love with windmills

Hmmmmm seems the green love affair with windmills has taken a turn.

Dutch fall out of love with windmills

(Reuters) - When the Netherlands built its first sea-based wind turbines in 2006, they were seen as symbols of a greener future.

Towering over the waves of the North Sea like an army of giants, blades whipping through the wind, the turbines were the country's best hope to curb carbon emissions and meet growing demand for electricity.

The 36 turbines -- each one the height of a 30-storey building -- produce enough electricity to meet the needs of more than 100,000 households each year.

But five years later the green future looks a long way off. Faced with the need to cut its budget deficit, the Dutch government says offshore wind power is too expensive and that it cannot afford to subsidize the entire cost of 18 cents per kilowatt hour -- some 4.5 billion euros last year.

The government now plans to transfer the financial burden to households and industrial consumers in order to secure the funds for wind power and try to attract private sector investment.

It will start billing consumers and companies in January 2013 and simultaneously launch a system under which investors will be able to apply to participate in renewable energy projects.

But the new billing system will reap only a third of what was previously available to the industry in subsidies -- the government forecasts 1.5 billion euros every year -- while the pricing scale of the investment plan makes it more likely that interested parties will choose less expensive technologies than wind................
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/16/us-dutch-wind-idUSTRE7AF1JM20111116


And then add this to it

Wind farms are useless, says Duke
The Duke of Edinburgh has made a fierce attack on wind farms, describing them as “absolutely useless”.

n a withering assault on the onshore wind turbine industry, the Duke said the farms were “a disgrace”.

He also criticised the industry’s reliance on subsidies from electricity customers, claimed wind farms would “never work” and accused people who support them of believing in a “fairy tale”.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/prince-philip/8901985/Wind-farms-are-useless-says-Duke.html

 

Just another "here's why alternatives to BigDirty [carbon & nuclear steam] won't work" thread.

Hey, did you hear about Scotland's wind potential?

The wind-swept greens of Scotland are notoriously miserable and filled with potential all at the same time..

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ylsbdp0IKNw&feature=player_embedded"]Golf In Scotland - very windy - YouTube[/ame]

 

LOL!

The Dutch will keep on pushing for green energy.

Any other opinion than that is nothing more than insane.

The Dutch are threathened to lose their entire (!) country because of rising sea-levels.

Think about that.

 

BigDirty doesn't care. They talked Japan into installing over 50 nuclear power plants on a tiny island nation. Now, with just one plant meltdown, Japan will struggle forever [half-life of plutonium is 24,000 years] to overcome radioactive seafood, land food, birth defects, poisoned aquifers and the like. From JUST ONE nuclear mishap...and all nuclear does is create steam to run turbines..

..as they sat atop one of the world's largest geothermal steam reserves at-surface...

They're trying to push nukes over other benign types of steam turbines as we sit her debating this. A water pump system was shut down remotely by a hacker recently in the US. What if they do that to a nuke plant? Have you seen the population spread around New York's courtesy-bomb?



TENS OF MILLIONS of people live around the evacuation zone of just that one plant...

Literally, one hacker with an axe to grind with the US [not like anyone does, right?] could take us out with a keystroke.

Anyone who disparages any and all efforts to pull away from this malignant insanity could themselves be a candidate for that rogue hacker..

 

Of course they will..They are an innovative people.. Look at the amazing system of dikes and levees they built in 1953 to keep the North Sea out..

Its never been replicated.

 

Did you hear about the wind turbines in Holland that cost too much to operate?


Holland had "potential."

But potential is not reality as it exists today.

 

No, no, no.

They cost to much to the government -- and I agree with that.

The industry has matured now, they don't need subsidies as big they received before...

Now, the subsidies are "privatized" -- and in a matter of years they will disappear completely. Good.

 

I checked my electric bill and it costs me 12 cents per kilowatt hour including all the taxes and fees.

Some parts of the US are half that amount but I'm still far better off then the Dutch who are being charged 18 cents.

And as I read it the Dutch government is still picking up some of the actual cost.

If windmills cannot compete in cost then they are a bad idea.

 

Just another reality check.

 

Same here...

 

No, no, no.

First off, electricity and other utilities are far more expensive in Europe than in America. I used to receive "time-outs" when I was a kid when I left the door open to long when the heating was on, or when I left the light on in an empty room. When I was a teenager I got shouted at for doing that -- happened to my friends too.

There is a mentality of being very economical with these kind of things because of Oil Crisises in the 70's. In the USA that was the same, but Reagan dismantled all of the American efforts to become more economical, and thus more competive.

Europe -- at large -- is way better preperared for high cost of utilities, not to mention it created an entire new industry and millions of jobs already. We are mass-exporting our technologies to USA, Asia, South America, etc.

We Europeans are charged more, but we use way less electricity (natural gas, etc.). Most American houses should be teared to the ground in Europe because they wouldn't pass the most elementary tests on economicality. People wouldn't buy them.

Hence, you see European businesses looking towards USA to expand fiercly because you are decades behind us on this matter. No kidding.

You are only fooling yourself if you think you somehow are doing better.

BTW -- that's what your Energy Secretary meant that the USA needs pricing as in Europe: it will force the USA to be more innovative, be better for the purchasing powers of American families, and better for your overall competivenss vis-à-vis abroad.

This as much is an economical question as it is an moral question, Left and Right agree on this.

 

As far as declared charges yes. But if you got that power from a nuclear plant, that is the second time you've paid for that power. The subsidies account for a vast chunk of the expense of producing nuclear:

Like our dutch friend is saying, in order to compete with monopolies, new technology is first subsidized and then weaned off. Nuclear will never be weaned off and in fact subsidies keep rising for it and are projected to be significantly higher as the aging fleet demands public funds to contain waste, decomission and monitor wastes for the next 24,000 years at a minimum. Wonder who will be president in 24,000 years?

Meanwhile Scotland's expanses buffeted with nonstop bracing winds are begging to provide Europe with a significant chunk of power.

 

So it seems.

But there is no reason it should be.

You have coal, and nuclear, hydro and other conventional energy sources that cost no more there than they do in America.

The Euro's are paying more for energy than they have to.

 

I'm not aware of any nuclear subsidies other than government loan guarantees.

 

France and Canada are doing just fine with nuclear power.

 

So was Japan before last March..

Goodness! I'd hate for you not to be aware. Let me help..

Here's the Table of Contents from the Union of Concerned Scientists' report entitled Nuclear Power: Still Not Viable without Subsidies http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nuclear_power/nuclear_subsidies_report.pdf It's the same report that led to the conclusion that it would be cheaper in many cases to buy nuclear power on the free market and give it away than to continue to subsidize it..

Here are some figures and tables to browse from the same link:

So that $.12/kwh figure is being pulled straight out of the BigNuke spin-machine. Did I mention that nuclear power merely uses radiation to create steam to run turbines? And that we have other ways of doing that, one of which now in full R&D is solar thermal where the fuel is FREE...FOREVER..? Hard to compete with that.

 

Sorry but that evidence was not very convincing.

All I saw were the loan guarantees and tax credits but nowhere did I see the government giving the nuclear power industry taxpayer dollars.

I agree that not having to pay taxes are a benefit.

But it really helps the consumer since all taxes are passed along to the end user.

 

Japan didn't upgrade their plants. France and Canada use modern reactors mostly.

A lot of Japan's reactors are using ancient (by nuclear standards) technology.

 

Well our entire fleet in the US is ancient too then by your standards.

Are you in favor of decomissioning them then?

And the very best and latest "safest" nuclear plants have a design for a passive cooling system in the event of a disaster or impending meltdown. That's some tanks mounted on the roof with only a 72 hour capacity to use gravity to flow water by fuel rods. After that: bupkiss..

What do you think of Scotland's wind potential? Pretty impressive. All the movies filmed on location in Scotland inevitably have people's hair blowing all around, all the time. That's energy. Put a harness on it and sell it..

 

I support all alternatives to coal and oil. I just don't have an axe to grind against nuclear power.

To answer your question though, yes, I would like America to modernize its nuclear infrastructure as well.

 

That's not what I asked. I asked SPECIFICALLY if you were into decomissioning our aging nuclear fleet? Not if you were into building new reactors. Two very different questions.

Here's what I asked:

 

If I'm not mistaken the reason we need nuclear is to pacify the same people that hated coal too.

We could replace the nuclear power plants with coal and natural gas since America has so much fossil fuels.

 

Well you're on the right track. We should actually use solar thermal next to carbon sources. I can see, quite happily actually, hybrid solar thermal/natural gas power plants where solar thermal provides FREE power through the highest use times while natural gas only kicks in as a backup during long nights or storms. Locate those plants in the arid & sunny Southwest and that natural gas use will be as minimal as you can imagine.

This provides that solar thermal can be used all over the US though. Instead of just burning constant natural gas, every natural gas or coal-fire power plant will lean, on sunny days, on its counterpart. Talk about reducing the carbon footprint!

 

According to the article, the subsidies are being transferred to the users electric bills.

Let's see how enamored the populace is with green when they are paying full price.

 

Having a full blown natural gas generating power plant sitting there idle is VERY expensive.