OT One of the reasons we need renewable energy/

Well one of the issues here is that those doing the sums seem to treat them as if they ware normal generators and not intermittent suppliers. I have no issue with wind farms but their costs has to be calculated against their real use times, and if it looks from past experience that building one in a given place will need huge subsidies for when its not used then why build it to start with. We simply do not learn from mistakes and as has been said before the owners seem to not care as they make money either way. I'm sure if we put our minds to it that we could build them to be able to use winds both strong and gusty and weak and wobbly, but we for some reason seem to have stagnated. Brian

You need to read this.

Any EROEI is difficult to calculate. ISTM for solar panels you can get whatever figure you want, depending on what information you put in, such as latitude and expected lifetime. Certainly, for panels in North Africa, California, South of France and other sunny climes with long hours of sunshine, their EROEI will come out quite well and they make sense, but in e.g. Northern Europe their EROEI is closer to break-even or even negative, i.e. they're net energy consumers.

Another issue is the imponderable of maintenance.

Tech out in the sun wind and rain doesnt last as well as tech in a machine hall.