Failure of Wind Farms in Cold Weather to Cost Billions

Wind farms are failing to produce electricity when the temperatures drop, costing billions of pounds and potentially leading to blackouts, leading industrialists warned this week.

Link:www.infowars.com

And let me guess,who's supposed to pick up the tab for that one? Here's another one of those 'Oops!' moments no one seems to have planned for. Cold weather has severely negative impacts on electromechanical devices. Not too mention the mayhem they would face with trying to reposition these windmills if the air currents change directions as a result of climate changes.

I would also like to point out that wave turbines would also be extremely difficult to operate in icy cold,turbulent seas. Areas,such as Northern Europe,may have a bad time providing energy (no matter where it comes from) to their cities if the weather shifts into a permanent state of deeper,colder weather until technological improvements can be made. Even with said necessary improvements and additional back-ups in place,the cost to society is likely to be high and may even create more problems than they solve. At the end of the day, there's no guarantees that all of this would even work as planned as we know Mother Nature can be a fickle and harsh mistress.

So much for the 'wonders' of the coming Green Revolution...

How does cold temps mean no wind in the UK? Don't they place the windmills to catch the ocean breeze?

Its funny that the same wind turbine work just fine in the US at -40 degrees.
But we have deicers on ours.
www.kellyaerospace.com...

The only problem is without deicers you must have a safety zone around them when they ice up and throw ice chunks.

They will throw dangerous ice up to 8 times the tower height.

green.blogs.nytimes.com...

The latest statistics show that, while wind turbines produced 8.6% of the nation's electricity during the three months to December 23, 2010, the percentage created this way when the snow and freezing temperatures hit fell to as low as 1.8%.

Nicholson said: "What is so worrying is that these sort of figures are not a one off. It was exactly the same last January and February when high pressure brought freezing cold temperatures, snow and no wind."

inside source:Failure of wind farms in cold weather to cost billions

In the high pressure causing the cold weather is this:

...no wind...

which is IMO more important then the temperature.

I own stocks in a company that provides electricity uo in the Dakotas ans Montana among other states

and [NYSE: OTTR] also has numberous windmill generators and a subsidary that builods and installs
these devices for producing renewable energy & the transmission of energy.
Why hasn't there been negative results over here in the northern regions of the USA...


hmmmm.... www.infowars
Ah So

So the question remains...why would they build windmills in an area that doesn't have high winds year round? Do they not make studies of this?

Plus wind is better when used with a battery bank or some form of storage...its not some on demand system that will output a certain percentage all the time. Obviously it varies with the weather. Money wise it makes no sence for an energy corp as they distribute too much energy in an on demand fashion. However if every home had batterys that charged, and limited the electicity use to the battery it would be different.

reply to post by LordBaskettIV


Off the top of my head...designed to fail?

What better way to derail renewable energy calls then to spend huge sums of money on a public program only to have it not work.

Watch to see if there are not renewed calls for more conventional energy forms.

There is the chance though that the rumours of a collapsing ocean current system are playing a role. If the wind patterns have changed then what once was a perfect spot is now less then ideal.

As far as the cold goes...I'm in Atlantic Canada and the windfarms here, some of which are off-shore, aren't having any problems (at least none that are being publically mentioned). The climate here can be pretty severe in the winter so if there was going to be a failure of these systems during the winter months it would have been identified early on.

reply to post by Dumbass


Hmmm! Could this differential in percentages be caused by a massive increase in demand maybe? That's where my vote lies. Not in the failure of the system but in it's limited capacity to deliver to an increase in demand.

As for the theory that there is less wind in cold temperatures. By direct observation this morning and yesterday 14 DegF 11km/h N. I say that there is plenty of wind.

reply to post by palg1


I'm not arguing that there is no wind in colder regions at all. (with either high or low pressuresystems, both warm and cold, the wind is not in the core but around it.)Fact is that colder air is heavier then warm air compared by volume and so more suitable for wind energy. I'm just following the source behind the source behind the source and in this article it states that there was a similar weatherpattern last winter:

Nicholson said: "What is so worrying is that these sort of figures are not a one off. It was exactly the same last January and February when high pressure brought freezing cold temperatures, snow and no wind."

If the differential in percentages be caused by a massive increase in demand, from 8.6% to 1.8%, the article should be focused on the increase of more then 400% of energy usage.

The funny thing is that none of the articles behind articles behind articles actually explains why there is less energy produced.