![Wind turbine]( "Wind turbine")
by turbinetastic
One thing about windy weather is that it keeps wind farms in the news. It continues to amaze me how obvious newspapers can be in picking the stories that reflect the particular views they either hold themselves or expect their readers to hold.
Some recent pro-wind power headlines:
- UK national grid glides through windy challenge (Guardian) A commentary on the challenge facing the national grid during the storms and the fact that power outages were due to equipment failures rather than an inability to react to unexpected wind variability on the part of the grid.
- Weather ‘doubles’ UK wind farm output (BBC) Report that turbine capacity factors doubled during the storm compared to the more usually-reported 30% figure.
- SSE wind power passes milestone (BBC) A report that energy company SSE has now installed more than 1GW of onshore wind power and has more onshore wind capacity than hydroelectric capacity.
- Wind energy output up 18% in 2011 (Ecotricity) Ecotricity reports that its like-for-like wind generation is up 18% compared to 2010 in 2011. (Misleading, in my opinion*).
I particularly liked the first one, which struck me as a very thoughtful piece on the way that, despite the undeniable challenges it presents, our mostly-aging electricity network is actually coping with the variability of wind without blackouts. I suspect that this is mostly due to a lot of legs paddling furiously behind the scenes, and it’s nice to see their hard work getting a mention.
Some recent anti-wind power headlines:
- Wind power is expensive and ineffective at cutting CO2 say Civitas (Telegraph) A report (dismissed as based on crank science by renewablesUK is released which claims wind power is expensive and does not cut CO2 emissions.
- Wrecked by gales again as windfarms get £300,000 to switch off…in high winds (Daily Mail) This is a double anti-wind piece talking about three small-scale wind turbines who had their blades sheared off in the storm, as well as mentioning the old “getting paid to shut down” chestnut again.
- Will the winds of change finally blow these eye sores away? (Daily Mail) An opinion piece. Actually as far as I can tell this article says that inexplicably people continue to build wind farms despite the fact that the writer doesn’t like them and can think of arguments against them.
Now, I am a firm believer in free speech, within the usually accepted limits of appropriateness and accuracy. Wind farms do not provide a “magic bullet” that will solve all our energy problems, and anyone who tells you otherwise is either deluded or trying to sell you one. Further, these are large, industrial machines which have to be clustered together on our hillsides — some people will not like them.
That’s all fine. What worries me is the lack of balance. We’re a nation of busy people and most of us are either time-limited or money-limited. Few of us are going to get out each morning and buy all the newspapers to get a balanced view of the pros and cons of each issue. Instead, we tend to buy the papers, watch the TV channels or visit the websites which most strongly reflect our existing views. And we visit them not to be challenged or in search of accuracy, in the main, but in search of confirmation of our existing bias. So those people who see the pre-wind propaganda will dismiss the anti-wind propaganda, and vice versa. If they even notice it at all.
If I have a point, it’s that I’d much rather live in a world where people are presented with facts, read them with an open mind and come to their own conclusion. Even if it means they disagree with me, that’s fine. Instead, we’ve set up a world in which people become further and further immersed in their own prejudices. There’s not much we can do about this, as far as I can see, but we should have our eyes open to it, at least. Especially when it’s our own prejudices we’re affirming.
* The Ecotricity article is misleading because it compares a year which will likely turn out to have been windier than average (2011) with one of the lowest wind speed years in recent history (2010). It’s basically presenting two extreme points on a graph and pretending there’s a useful message there. Sure, it’s probably true, but that doesn’t make it meaningful. (Back)
‘Turbinetastic’ is a wind industry professional. He/she has kindly agreed to syndicate their posts to this blog. This post was originally published on turbinetastic’s own blog on 30/12/2011.
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