Electricity generated by a wind turbine

Gridwatch uses an official site. Ultimately the National Grid. What I an saying is the national grid gives one figure. The renewable lobby another.

Why would the national grid lie? Why *wouldn't* the renewable lobby lie?

The point is that in these matters the ONS is aad data blind as everyone.

If you look at the fine print they calculate the figures FROM the capacity factor. They do not measure it .

No, we don't. The amount a wind farm can collect is around 2-4W/sq meter (average). If you want 60GW, that's a lot of square meters.

That has to be shared with ships and drilling platforms and so on

And lot of oil being burnt in boats to fix them every 6 weeks

Am I right in thinking that if the strike price is low, then with the present astronomically high energy prices, government should be raking it in, or is the Contract For Difference not the same as the strike price?

They do talk about using estimated generation numbers, but the way I read it, that was only in edge-cases such as for the final month in a year's figures where reporting isn't yet complete.

If we are being fed estimates, dressed-up as measured figures, they ought to re-phrase their reports ...

"In 2020, the UK generated 75,610 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity from both offshore and onshore wind."

Possibly not 100% backup generation, but in general, yes.

Yes, you are right. The wholesale energy price does seem higher than the strike prices I have seen, £50-£100+ per MW/h. Currently, solidly above £250 per MW/h, peaking at £500.

Maybe I'm looking at the wrong figure?

AIUI wind farms do not need to built in territorial waters (12-mile limit). Hence, we have much, much more than 20,000 square kilometres.

Yes, we do, but not te reneable energy companies Look at ROCS

Here you will find that in 2022 there is half a ROC granted per MWh, and us value is currently over £50 - so you can add £25/MWh onto any strike price immediately.

Note that any supplier of carbon based electricity has to buy ROCS

Then there is the climate change levy - another £7/MWh on at least business customers, who pass it straight on to consumers

The green scam is destroying wealth and passing it straight into the pockets of every single organization the anti-capitalists warned you about

Strike price contracts are not what we pay. Windfarms can opt out of them

I don't know just what "fine print" TNP has in mind.

I do know the published methodology and data sources does *not* start with capacity. BEIS survey every month a (published) list of major producers - those with capacity over 50MW primarily for supply. Every quarter they survey those using wind for in-house use. They certainly use estimates to fill in gaps - eg when a generator doesn't return figures. But they make their estimates based on past figures from that generator.

Estimates based on capacity are made. IIRC an example is for FITs. But the published methodology there makes clear they are based on sampling. It's not just a matter of waving wet fingers in the air.

However it is not uncommon to get a week or more each year where the entire continent of Europe is becalmed. Typically when it is dark, and very cold as well!

Grids are not designed for wide scale distribution, only balancing. Long distance interconnects can distribute, but are massively expensive to build. (and a super grid of them would probably be comically expensive)

If you can't afford it, it is impossible. Bit like expecting batteries to give you grid scale storage.

OOI, what percentage of the time is it less than say 10% of installed capacity?

(what is the granularity of your wind source data? Is it fine enough to see hour to hour troughs and peaks?)

And how many 1000 feet deep is the water outside our territorial limits?

So they are, as I said. data poor. ALL their data on how much is being generated is based on data supplied by those who have every reason to overstate their generation figures, in order to make the biggest case for more renewables and to claim the greatest amount of subsidy.

This anomaly has been there for a decade.

There is what the national grid reports as being generated, from power stations whose nameplate capacity is well known, and there is what the renewable companies themselves report as being generated, which is ±30% more...

Now take a step backwards and try and be impartial

Cui Bono?

Follow the money

Go figure.

In deep water they'd use floating wind farms. Hywind floats in about

This guy gives a distribution.

It seems to me your hypothesis is:

a. wind generators have routinely, for years, overstated by around 30% the power they have generated;

b. by doing so they have fraudulently claimed £billions in renewable obligation certificates;

c. this has been covered up by many employees in the many generators involved. Whistleblowers either bought off, scared off or ...;

d. auditors and Ofgem's anti-fraud team have either failed to spot the difference between the figures claimed and the power actually generated

- despite the fact that the figures for actual power for many are metered and reported. Or they too have been "dealt with";

e. those critical of subsidies for renewables have been too incompetent or too scared to get the data, make the comparisons, and blow the whole thing open. Or those who tried have been "dealt with".

Frankly seems rather unlikely given how easy it is these days for pissed-off employees to dump incriminating evidence anonymously.

We are building long distance interconnects, they are expensive, but not prohibitively so.

Wind is in the ballpark cost wise, it may be more expensive than nuclear, but I'm not seeing prohibitive showstoppers.

Hydrogen could be stored, in effect a battery.

And it might not be. In fact, a couple of times a winter or so, it very definitely isn't, and you get next to nothing from wind, and nothing from solar, for up to a week.

At an absurd cost. Why not dimension the system for your actual needs plus some margin, and disburse it around the country, thus minimising the grid cost. Why should the public be expected to pay for more than that? Eh? To me, that sounds like an all-nuclear supply.

See above.