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Showing posts with label wind farms. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wind farms. Show all posts


With some element of hilarity, we note that the photograph of a wind turbine factory, chosen to illustrate the plight of Vesta Wind Systems, accompanies an article headed: "Green Job Growth Outpacing Other Industries".

The same factory, which so proudly heralded this news now accompanies a report headed: "Vestas Plunges as Wind-Turbine Maker Cuts Forecasts Blaming Delayed Orders". The company which manufactures the blade illustrated lost almost a quarter of its value in Copenhagen trading after reporting a larger-than-expected loss and cut forecasts. It blames "delayed orders."

At a time when this greenie firm should be enjoying strengthening demand and multiplying profits, it has instead suffered its biggest one-day drop in its share price since November 2002 after posting a second-quarter loss of €119 million. And what makes this particularly significant is that the average estimate, from a survey of 15 analysts was a €7.3 million loss.

"Right now it's just a shock, and Vestas has suffered a serious blow to its credibility," says Teea Reijonen, a London-based analyst with Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc. "Analysts are going to take a very dim view of margins for 2011 given what’s happened this year."

Vesta has now cut its sales forecast for this year to €6 billion from €7 billion on delays in expected orders in the US, Spain and Germany. The credit crisis has prompted banks to restrict loans to wind-park developers that buy turbines from Vestas and its competitors. Not yet has the bubble burst, though, as the company is still talking about delays. And the company has signed at least eight orders the past month, including its biggest ever in the US and its largest in Australia.

There are still some mugs around, and still too much money in this game ... but the writing looks as if it could be on the wall.

COMMENT THREAD

neg[i-neg]
This time last year we were remarking on a not uncommon phenomenon in the UK – an almost total lack of wind. And here we are again, with the temperatures struggling to get above freezing and we have, effectively, a zero wind state - see below right.

The effect of this on the electricity generation system is evident from the latest status report (see above) which shows a predominant reliance on gas, which accounted for nearly half of total production in the last 24 hours, followed by coal at nearly thirty percent and nuclear at just under twenty percent.

Wind, in all its glory, managed to deliver a risible 0.4 percent – which is hardly even a rounding error and amounts to an insignificant contribution to the national electricity supply. Producing a mere 163 MW at around midnight last night, against an installed capacity of just over 4 GW, that represents a load factor of four percent.

What price, therefore, The Guardian prattling away in June last that "Offshore wind farms could meet a quarter of the UK's electricity needs" – a claim made by this fatuous government of ours.

Thus we have this week that utter fool Gordon Brown, masquerading as our prime minister, announcing this week the launch of a "£100 billion green power revolution" with the awards of a raft of development contracts to build a new generation of offshore wind farms.

Wind+state+1[i-Wind+state+1]Sustainable only with a massive subsidy, extracted from the electricity bills of unwitting users via the Renewables Obligation, these monuments to folly can no more deliver the goods when needed than can Mr Brown – a fitting monument to his obsession with (non-existent) global warming.

Needless to say, the obsession is shared by the wannabe prime minister David Cameron so, if these ridiculous fabrications are ever built, it will be on his watch that they are built, the first batch not due to come into production until 2015 - if then.

With a theoretical capacity of 35 GW – but an actual load factor a third of that – this puts the construction cost at about ten times that of nuclear. And then there is the cost of the back-up generation.

There can be no greater monument to the folly of our current batch of leaders who are prepared to countenance this absurdly expensive and unreliable scheme, saddling us with massive costs which we can ill-afford to pay. There should be a special place in Hell for these people.

CLIMATE CHANGE – NEW THREAD

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