It’s starting to get cold out. The sun was down and Alberta’s wind power generation fell to next to nothing last night – less than half a per cent capacity.
Meanwhile in Saskatchewan, we’ve had several days of minimal wind power generation.
In other news, they’ve started to bring in floating accommodations for the staff to build the Woodfibre LNG facility.
And Precision Drilling meets debt reduction goal, on track to repay $500 million by 2025.
When repeatedly faced with this reality, at some point a sane person would have to acknowledge that this venture has yielded so little in returns that it will never generate enough to pay for upkeep of these turbines and infrastructure, let alone allow the owners to set aside funds for future replacement. Or is that an unfair concern in the Green playbook?
The intermittent nature of wind power will be its downfall. But our economy will be saddled with the cost of the largely unrecoverable capital for decades. Its not like you can just pull those concrete piles out of the ground and use them for some other purpose.
You lost me at ‘sane person’ – I didn’t see it as applicable ‘under the circumstances’.
Ohhhh, I dunno about not having any use for those concrete foundations, Dennis. The politicians responsible for the boondoggle could be tied to them when the foundations are sunk to the bottom of the sea. The beauty of that plan is that the pollies can’t double down on their follies and it will make their replacements think twice about funding more pinwheels.
(Excellent comment, BTW. Sorry. Can’t seem to find that invisible upvote button.)
Maybe a single test windmill would have been a good idea before a whole province wide implementation. That is the difference between engineering methodology and political bovine excrement.
Nah, convert Edmonton to run entirely on wind and solar. The sozis want it, they can live with it.
Back in 2008, I was in Germany and saw one of these monstrosities. The locals told me they were totally useless because the didn’t generate enough electricity (when they needed it) and an eyesore. You’d think all these “brain trusts” would check with countries that have had these things in place a few years to figure out their usefulness before blowing billions of dollars of tax money on them.
That would require real effort, or even 5 minutes of internet research and political ideologues already know the right answer without even asking the question because they are so damned much smarter than the rest of the people that they rule. The second problem is related: they never suffer the consequences of their own decisions because that would require them to change and they are incapable of change until they suffer.
Reliance on these monstrosities will kill people. It’s that simple.
A feature, not a bug.
BTW, it just occurred to me to ask; is there a carbon tax on windmill generated electricity?
I think I’ll go search on that question.
Should be, they cannot be built without “fossil” fuels. I am sure someone has read my comments on that at least once.
From Strauss’s “too cheap to meter” —–> “nothing to meter”.
Liberal progress.
The old Soviet Union often didn’t meter oil and gas in their pipelines either. Which led to ENORMOUS spills and explosions.
Strauss was opining on atomic energy back in the early fifties and the enormous benefits for our children’s children if we had the political will to implement it. He had the foresight to realize that cheap and easily accessible energy would advance society not regress it as we’re seeing today. I guess that was my point.
I see the West is going through a cold snap this week…Guibeault and his fellow green psychopaths wouldn’t blink an eye if you were freezing in the dark.
They’re saving the planet dontcha know? And that’s the price us plebs are going to have to pay.
I figured this would happen when I looked at the 7 day weather forecast a couple days ago. Cold temps mean very little wind. I expect that electricity demand will be high as the cold front settles in for a few days. With this type of extreme cold, mechanical failure somewhere in the grid is always a risk.
A natural gas furnace still needs electricity to function. So, this weekend we fired up the backup generator to make sure it’ll be ready if the electricity goes down – all good. Check extra water supply – good. Sufficient no cook food supply – good. We’re all ready to wait out the cold snap.
After an ice storm a decade ago I bought an inverter I can run off my van that provides enough power to run my furnace, and a gas stove. The oven doesn’t work without electric control but the burners still do. It would be better to have a generator, but I got the 50 buck solution instead of the thousands of dollar solution. Obviously I don’t want my van running 24/7, but If I ever need it (I’ve test ran it, it works but I’ve never needed to use it) I figure I can run the van for 15 minutes every few hours to get the house nice and warm, then turn it off until I need to run it again.
Better than nothing. Houses start getting cold pretty fast at -35 to -40C or colder. For us, buying a generator is like buying insurance. We use it about one every winter. My husband is an electrician so he installed the electrical equipment properly to code and labelled everything (plus step by step instructions) so the rest of us can use the generator safely if he’s not home. An important part to note if you do go the generator route.
“Precision Drilling meets debt reduction goal, on track to repay $500 million by 2025. ”
If only Baytex would do the same
And where is APEGA (an organization I used to be proud to be part of) in all of this? You can’t possibly be an engineer and not see the disaster coming. They should be leading the charge against this rank stupidity and yet they are either silent or cheering it on. Incredibly disappointing. I cancelled my membership of 35 years as a result of this garbage.
yeah, I’m an engineering drop out and I can see it – why can’t the professional engineers? Why aren’t they screaming from the rooftops?
On the other side of APEGA/APEGS, almost every single geologist I’ve spoken to, behind closed doors, says anthropogenic climate change is bovine feces. The climate is ALWAYS changing. Their entire science is based upon it.
Very disappointing that they will only say that “behind closed doors”. This kind of cowardice is allowing the insanity to continue.
Keep building the crap. It will change nothing other than your bank balance. Stupid people.
When are they going to start building fans to keep the wind generation turbines spinning? They can use coal fired power to run the fans.
How much copper is in the ground linking these monstrosities to each other and “The Grid”?
There are numerous costs that we cannot see or we forget about completely!
Wind Power is a total scam and they want to force us to depend upon Wind Power maybe we should put all of Washington D.C. and the whole UN Facility on Wind and Solar Only
well l am outraged. such a popular tune based on lies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBiLKTmRqkY