Britain’s one of the darkest countries in the world–Sir David Mackay

Sir,

Lorna Slater (Scottish Green Party) has announced that the Scottish Government is to proceed with up to 6000 MW of solar PV by 2030 (P&J Oct 30^th).

What will this mean for the stability of the Scottish power supply?

In July 2030, for a few hours either side of midday, solar PV would provide all of our power.

What is going to happen to all that wind power that, on occasions, may be produced at the same time?

Will it be curtailed?

Of course, for a few hours either side of midnight, solar PV will produce nothing at all.

This means that all other sources of power have to be varied continuously to compensate for Earth’s celestial journey.

But wind cannot be controlled.  On a calm night, we may produce nothing at all. What then?

In January 2030, 6000 MW of solar PV will produce barely any electricity during the day and nothing at all for several hours either side of midnight.

When the wind doesn’t blow either, we would have to depend on backup power plants and/or imports – so much for Scotland being independent.

Some readers may be thinking about storage. I will soon get around to explaining the physical and economic impossibility of grid scale energy storage.

At the time of his untimely death in April 2016, Sir David MacKay was probably the most widely known and respected energy analyst in the world.

Author of the book “Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air”, he spent 5 years as Chief Scientific Advisor on energy to HM Government.

Dying from cancer, he gave a final interview 11 days before his death where he tried to set the record straight. It is easy to find the video and a transcript on line. Below I report some key passages from this interview.

“there’s so much delusion and I think it’s so dangerous for humanity that people allow themselves to have these delusions that they’re willing to not think carefully about the numbers and the realities, and the laws of physics and the realities of engineering.”

“To the credit of the civil servants who I worked with when I went to government – I may have indicated that they had some bad policies – but when it came to whether solar should be in the mix, they had done the numbers for that already and solar just wasn’t on the table at all.”

“..and there was very successful lobbying by the solar lobbyists as well – so now there’s this widespread belief that solar is a wonderful thing, even though it’s highly intermittent and mainly produces energy in July and in December produces 9 times less than it does in July. You know, Britain is one of the darkest countries in the world.”

It would be foolhardy for our politicians to ignore this sound advice from one of the World’s most highly respected energy analysts.

Dr Euan Mearns

Aberdeen

APPENDIX 1

Floating Offshore Wind Systems in the Impoverished State of Maine

https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/floating-offshore-wind...

Offshore Wind Capacity Placed on Operation in 2021

World: During 2021, worldwide offshore wind capacity placed in operation was 17,398 MW, of which China 13,790 MW, and the rest of the world 3,608 MW, of which UK 1,855 MW; Vietnam 643 MW; Denmark 604 MW; Netherlands 402 MW; Taiwan 109 MW

Of the 17,398 MW, just 57.1 MW was floating, about 1/3%

At end of 2021, 50,623 MW was in operation, of which just 123.4 MW was floating, about 1/4%

https://www.energy.gov/eere/wind/articles/offshore-wind-market-repo...

NOTE: Despite the meager floating offshore MW in the world, pro-wind politicians, bureaucrats, etc., aided and abetted by the lapdog Media, in the impoverished State of Maine, continue to fantasize about building 3,000 MW of 850-ft-tall floating offshore wind turbines by 2040!!

Maine government bureaucrats, etc., in a world of their own climate-fighting fantasies, want to have about 3,000 MW of floating wind turbines by 2040; a most expensive, totally unrealistic goal, that would further impoverish the already-poor State of Maine for many decades.

Those bureaucrats, etc., would help fatten the lucrative, 20-y, tax-shelters of mostly out-of-state, multi-millionaire, wind-subsidy chasers, who likely have minimal regard for:

1) Impacts on the environment and the fishing and tourist industries of Maine, and

2) Already-overstressed, over-taxed, over-regulated Maine ratepayers and taxpayers, who are trying to make ends meet in a near-zero, real-growth economy.

Those fishery-destroying, 850-ft-tall floaters, with 24/7 strobe lights, visible 30 miles from any shore, would cost at least $7,500/ installed kW, or at least $22.5 billion, if built in 2023 (more after 2023)

They would produce electricity at about 40 c/kWh, without subsidies, about 20 c/kWh with subsidies, the wholesale price at which utilities would buy from Owners (higher prices after 2023)

https://www.maine.gov/governor/mills/news/governor-mills-signs-bill...

The Maine woke bureaucrats are falling over each other to prove their "greenness", offering $millions of this and that for free, but all their primping and preening efforts has resulted in no floating offshore bids from foreign developers

The Maine people have much greater burdens to look forward to for the next 20 years, courtesy of the Governor Mills incompetent, woke bureaucracy that has infested the state government 

The Maine people need to finally wake up, and put an end to all the climate scare-mongering, which aims to subjugate and further impoverish them, by voting the entire Democrat woke cabal out and replace it with rational Republicans in 2024

The present course leads to financial disaster for the impoverished State of Maine and its people.

The purposely-kept-ignorant Maine people do not deserve such maltreatment

NOTE: The above prices compare with the average New England wholesale price of about 5 c/kWh, during the 2009 - 2022 period, 13 years, courtesy of:

Natural gas-fueled CCGT plants, with low-cost, low-CO2, very-low particulate/kWh

Nuclear plants, with low-cost, near-zero CO2, zero particulate/kWh

Hydro plants, with low-cost, near-zero-CO2, zero particulate/kWh

APPENDIX 2

The wind/solar/battery bubble is in meltdown mode. This is not a surprise, because the US-EIA makes LCOE “evaluations” of wind and solar, which purposely exclude major LCOE items, regarding:

- Onshore grid expansion/reinforcement and very expensive battery system storage

- A fleet of quick-reacting power plants for counteracting/balancing the variable output of wind/solar

- Additional power plants for making up the electricity shortfall during low wind/solar conditions

- Output curtailments during high wind/solar conditions, i.e., paying owners not to produce what they could have produced

Such EIA deceptions reinforced the national delusion wind and solar are competitive with fossil fuels, which is far from reality.

Wind and solar would not exist without at least 50% subsidies, plus their output could not be fed into the grid, without the above four freebies. The costs are paid by taxpayers, ratepayers, and added to government debts.

APPENDIX 3