Something’s blowing in the wind
Published on 2nd May, 2011
Oh dear, will we ever get it right? Reports from Scotland this week have revealed that during a period of high winds and rain, wind farms were paid to cease operations due to their over enthusiastic productivity from the weather. The reasoning was quite sound- there were no facilities to store the amount of energy above demand, especially since the increased amount of hydro power from the rain was available. The part which boggles the mind is that no one thought to avoid this in the first place by building the infrastructure to absorb and store surplus energy produced by renewables. After all, hydro schemes have to take into account the great possibility of facing drought conditions, so why not hedge their bets on overproduction? Of course, if they’re going to be paid to produce anyway, then there’s no incentive.
Let’s say it nice and slowly to the energy networks: energy from renewable sources is CLEAN, CHEAP, and LIMITLESS. Paying suppliers up to twenty times the price of this for energy just to be thrown away is just, well, stupid.
