With power consumers suffering the disastrous consequences of the wind and solar transition in Germany and Britain, the MSM are still doing their best to deflect attention from the obvious cause.

How we found ourselves in a world where power prices are simply unaffordable, and power can only be delivered according the vagaries of the weather, isn’t all down to rent-seeking crony capitalists and politicians on the take. No, the mainstream media have been in it, up to their necks. They still are.

Notwithstanding the renewable energy driven disaster unfolding in Europe, the MSM keep dishing up propaganda memes about wind power being cheaper than coal (it isn’t) or that the ‘transition’ to an all-wind and sun powered future is simply ‘inevitable’. Notwithstanding overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Another classic line is about such and such wind farm ‘powering’ 100,000 homes. Which is clearly meant to give the impression that those homes will be powered exclusively by wind power, generated around-the-clock and available on demand, irrespective of the weather.

It’s the myth that provides the backbone for equally spurious claims made by towns or cities – like Canberra, Australia – that they’re being powered by nothing but wind and solar. Claims that always ignore the fact that the claimants remain connected to a coal or gas-fired grid, as Canberra does.

Paul Homewood provides an example of the above, below.

What The BBC Did Not Tell You About Hornsea 2
Not a Lot of People Know That
Paul Homewood
3 September 2022

More renewables propaganda from the BBC:

The world’s largest offshore wind farm is now fully operational, 55 miles off the coast of Yorkshire.

The Hornsea 2 project can generate enough electricity to power about 1.3 million homes – that’s enough for a city the size of Manchester.

A decade ago renewables made up just 11% of the UK’s energy mix. By 2021 it was 40%, with offshore wind the largest component.

Hornsea 2 is part of a huge wind farm development by energy firm Orsted.

“The UK is one of the world leaders in offshore wind,” Patrick Harnett, programme director for the Hornsea 2 wind farm told BBC News.

“This is very exciting after five years of work to have full commercial operations at the world’s largest offshore wind farm.”

Hornsea 2 has taken the title of “world’s largest” from its neighbour Hornsea 1. It covers an area about four and half time the size of Liverpool. With even larger projects under construction nearby in the North Sea it’s unlikely its title will last long. The Dogger Bank wind farm, which when fully built will be able to power 6m homes, is due to start coming on stream next year.

Each of the 165 turbines in Hornsea 2 stands about 200m tall from the sea level to the top of the 81m blades. Mr Harnett says a single rotation takes six seconds and provides enough energy to power a home for a day.

Over the last decade the size of wind farms and turbines have both increased, helping to bring down the cost of the electricity they generate.

“The last time I checked it was roughly £450 per megawatt hour to buy electricity generated by gas,” says Simon Evans from Carbon Brief, a website that follows renewable energy issues.

“That’s about 9 times more expensive than the current cost to build new renewable capacity.”

In the UK government’s latest auction round in July, 11 gigawatts of renewable energy was commissioned which is enough to power about 12m homes. As part of it’s Net Zero targets the government has committed to de-carbonising electricity generation by 2035, with offshore wind playing a crucial role.
BBC

The claim that Hornsea can supply 1.3 million homes is the usual renewable lobby spin – they only account for domestic consumption, which accounts for a third of all electricity, and ignore other users of electricity such as industry, commerce and the public sector.

Somehow, I suspect Manchester would end up looking like Deadwood Gulch, if schools, hospitals, industry and transport were not supplied with any electricity!

In overall national terms, Hornsea 2 will supply about 1.5% of the UK’s power, still a sizeable amount, so why doesn’t the BBC tell the full story?

But much more importantly, Hornsea will be hopelessly intermittent, just as other wind farms are. We now have three years of data from Hornsea 1, and the charts below show just how variable the output there has been:

Source

Hornsea 1 – Phase 1 is rated at 400MW, and output has varied anywhere from 1 MW and 390 MW since 2019.

Maybe the BBC would like to explain what the good folk of Manchester are supposed to do for about half of the year when output is below average?

Then we get the claim by Carbon Brief that wind power costs a ninth of gas generation, about £50/MWh for new generation. Hornsea 2 has a CfD for £73.71/MWh. But as The Times revealed this week, Orsted, who own Hornsea 2, have not taken up their contract, and are instead selling on the open market, something you will be unlikely to hear from the BBC.

All of the electricity generated by Hornsea 2 will be sold by its parent company, Orsted A/S, the Danish state owned company, formerly known as DONG.

Their Half Year Accounts show they have been selling all of their electricity generated at an average of £219/MWh this year, up from £82/MWh last year. In a full year, this price rise means a windfall profit of £4.5bn, most of which will accrue from UK operations.

But neither the BBC nor Carbon Brief will ever tell you this.

Source

Not a Lot of People Know That

Monday Open Thread

Essay by Eric Worrall

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s sabotage of cheaper gas, by immediately re-imposing the fracking ban upon assuming office, in my opinion demonstrates a callous indifference to the suffering of ordinary Britons.

Air fryer and slipper sales surge as UK strives to reduce energy use

Consumers move quickly to prepare for unaffordable energy bills despite mild autumn, finds market research

Sarah Butler @whatbutlersaw
Fri 28 Oct 2022 16.00 AEDT

Sales of air fryers, slow cookers, microwaves and electric blankets are soaring as households faced with unaffordable energy bills look for ways to reduce their power use.

Air fryers – a small countertop convection oven that uses less electricity than a conventional cooker – are in huge demand, with the number sold in September four times higher than in the same month last year, according to the market research firm GfK. So are electric cooking pots such as pressure cookers, rice cookers, slow cookers or multifunctional pots that can do all three things, with sales up 80%.

GfK said 216% more electric blankets were sold in September this year, as households searched for less expensive ways of staying warm and cooking food – the two most energy-intensive needs in a home.

Such is demand that some popular models of air fryer, such as the Ninja, have sold out. Asda said its sales of air fryers had increased 320% increase on year, while those of slow cookers had more than doubled and sales of heated airers increased by 90% up compared with last September.

…

Citizens Advice has said its advisers have been told of people unplugging fridges and freezers, washing clothes by hand and skipping meals in order to cut back on their energy costs.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/oct/28/air-fryer-and-slipper-sales-surge-as-uk-strives-to-reduce-energy-use

In the last leadership election a few weeks ago, which Liz Truss won, Rishi Sunak was favoured by members of parliament, but Liz Truss won the support of the British Conservative Party membership.

Angered by the Truss win, members of parliament rebelled against Truss, and Liz Truss’ attempts to soften the Conservative Party’s extreme green energy agenda by liberating the British energy market. Truss was forced to resign.

Conservative members of parliament then apparently decided not to give Conservative party supporters a second chance to vote against their chosen candidate, so they circumvented the procedural need for a membership vote by ensuring Rishi stood as the only candidate.

One of Rishi Sunak’s first acts as Prime Minister was to re-instate a long standing ban on fracking, which his predecessor Prime Minister Liz Truss had attempted to repeal.

I predict in the next election the British Conservatives will be wiped out at the ballot box if they continue showing such contempt for the concerns of ordinary people. Even though the other major parties currently offer more of the same, by the next election voters will be utterly desperate to signal their need for a change.

Unfortunately the next election doesn’t have to be held until the start of 2025. British voters will likely have to endure two more years of energy policy hell under Rishi Sunak, before they get the opportunity to deliver their verdict on the British Conservative government’s decade of gross mismanagement of energy policy.