Jeremy Clarkson, wind turbines and mental methane.

Why is it that celebrities always feel they have to add their penny’s worth to discussion topics they have absolutely no understanding of?
Jeremy Clarkson, probably best known from the TV series Top Gear has done it again.
This time his contribution ranges below farthing level.

Why again?

Because a few years ago he was paid handsomely to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the invention of the jet engine. He clearly didn’t know anything about that either and spent BBC’s money yawning himself on an 80 hour global roundtrip, boring the socks off his viewers and contributing nothing with even a remote reference to neither the jet engine nor the cultural and geographical marvels he happened to pass on the way.
And hey presto: now he is onto an eruption through his elbows (or from a worse source, talking about methane) about wind turbines.

According to an article, committed by guru Clarkson in the Sunday Times on 17 March 2012, wind mills should be dead and buried with the exception of the few that could be left for future generations to see at select museums around the world.

In one fell swoop this self-confessed know-it-all has judged climate change to be AGW and wind turbines to be a waste of land, money, time and energy – literally.
And I am sure the fans (sorry another pun) are drooling.

According to Clarkson, in particular the Danes, whom he recognises have a lot of experience and probably some sort of a leading role in this industry, have

- “ built wind farms that don’t work” and that
- “ haven’t caused one single conventional power station to be shut down” and
- “ caused their normal power stations to produce even more CO2 than they did in the past”.

Quite a mouthful from a person, whose main contribution to the life of couch-potatoes seems to be to demonstrate colourful use of the English language when determining which car is the fastest when driven nowhere by other TV celebs and the injection of satirical comments at a level that would make a 6th former proud.

Clarkson’s objective in life seems to be ridicule, self projection and cheap laughs.
Well, there’s the UK entertainment industry for you, when it is worst.
Then I, for one, prefer Freddy Starr.

Could it be, that in our attempt to create progress for the human species, while searching for welfare and pursuit of happiness (1776), we have stumbled upon the single most important invention ever: electricity?

And that this, as Clarkson correctly says pulled the descendants of both Henry VIII and his stable boy out of comparably dirty lifestyles?

Would it also be worth mentioning, that the electricity that drives the human circus , doesn’t come for free – neither in money nor the punishment called pollution?
And perhaps, that sitting on one’s bum doesn’t bring us anywhere?

The wind turbine story is a complex one.
It has its success chapters and its failures, but it deserves better than the Clarkson celebrity treatment and having come as far as we have, understanding the issues, wouldn't have been possible without research, risk taking - and the construction of windmills.

In some awesome way, the major arguments we humans are able to produce, always seem to come in waves of 3.
So, here are my 3 points, concentrated  for the sake of readability:

- Political issues

- Technical issues

- Philosophical/Aesthetical issues – also called emotional issues.

That should cover most.

Political.
From the wood burning stove, over coal and gas-fired power plants and nuclear power stations we have ended up in a situation, where there is not enough energy to go around for the (un)foreseeable future.

The energy sourcing is unevenly distributed. It is increasingly expensive or dangerous to extract, the energy product has political power and a state’s obligation and ability to provide for its citizens happiness is dependent on its economic ability, power position in the world and growth ambitions.

Without electricity you don’t even need to be bothered.
In short!

Changing that situation is not trivial, bar the option of returning to Henry VIII and his stable boy’s comparable life styles.
Therefore, a quick scan of the options makes wind, sun, water, thermo (both –nuclear and –ground) easy choices for our undivided attention. The problem is, that to learn how to harness one or more of these options efficiently costs a lot of money, but in the short term our know-how is encapsulated in the mentioned areas.

This is where “lift your bum” comes into the picture.
We will no doubt make many mistakes during our search for new energy supply – as the required technology develops with every new attempt to solve the inherent technical problems.
The combustion engine is a good example – one that Clarkson should understand.
Just compare the Alvis, that I saw outside the pub yesterday, with a modern Lexus Hybrid car.

But if there were no political will or power to help find out, we would never know.

Does the presenting problem mean that we shouldn’t research the fusion option either? We have no idea how to go about it, so research is hugely expensive and the outcome is far from certain, but it would solve our energy quest once and for all.
The answer is political, i.e. a belief or stance - and that's why we continue to pump money into this (perhaps) black hole.

Does the fact, that there’s overproduction of electricity at night and that inter-state pricing is a hot potato, depending sometimes on demand, sometimes on supply and most of the times on differences in local politics, mean that wind turbines are “out”?
How about solving the problem, where the problem arises – and it is not in the wind.

Therefore, Mr. Tax-payer, suck your thumbs, think about future generations and stop paying £6-800mill. to e.g. India in "3rd world support"; they even say they don't want it and they are perfectly able to manage their  nuclear programme themselves, thank you.
That should pay the cost of a few wind turbines on UK's Atlantic coast - if this is the solution.

Technical.
The arguments go in circles, based on no wind, too much wind, maintenance, cost of construction, difficulties concerning storage of energy, variation in current phase, steady supply to the grid and potential impact on more or less stable networks.
A lot of this has been solved, much needs attention – but it is a fact that we have learned a lot in the last 30 years - because we lifted our bums and because funds were made available.
Without the wind farms this learning would have blown in the wind.
Danish wind technology has helped us to reach a situation where we can speak from a base of knowledge.

The bottom line in terms of supply is, that there are no more big problems with wind energy generation and supply issues than with other forms of energy sources.
Just different problems.
Granted, they may be big, but doing nothing doesn't get us any further.
Example: if the energy storage problem were solved and/or oil prices went totally through the roof and/or political instability closed the oil and gas pipe lines, what then?

But how would a TV celebrity know this?
The difference is that his opinion reaches a larger public and it helps promote attitudes based on ignorance.

A good example is the three wind mills supplying the World Trade Centre in Bahrain with all its energy. No one wants to take responsibility for selling the inevitable excess energy to the Bahrain grid, e.g. at night time, claiming that a weak network couldn't handle the variation in supply.

If there is a reader out there, who wants to know why we today know much more about the stability of wind turbine replacement energy, then here’s a sample argument that shows how far we have come on the issue of stabilising variations in wind generated energy supply:

"The typical wind turbine has a twin supplied asynchronous generator that has the ability to control the frequency on the stator side through slip rings on the rotor side. Through forcing a frequency on the rotor you eliminate frequency interference, and through this control you can generate an active or reactive result, according to what the network requires. Mind you, modern wind turbines are actually helping stabilize weak networks."

Perhaps they don’t trust this fact in Bahrain, as the prophet Muhammad didn’t foresee this situation in the Hadith.

Success stories of how wind energy has replaced, and added to, conventional energy generation exist – even in Denmark, where you claim the situation is less than successful. Perhaps the failure to close down any of the conventional power stations, as stated by Mr. Clarkson, is owed to the fact that wind turbines take care of some of the growth in energy supply.
It could also be because political issues have clouded the situation and caused total confusion of the pricing structure.

In short, Mr. Clarkson – there’s no reason to spread FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) about wind turbines for your private political or self aggrandizing reasons, in particular as you have no idea what you are talking about.

As the research moves forward, we may find that there are lots of ways to store energy from wind turbines or to use them for an extended variety of purposes: Export of energy though links to international grids, electric car charging, storing of energy in water reservoirs, in hydrogen cells and a plethora of  other possibilities not yet thought of.

I will agree with you, Jeremy, in one area: the moment we find that there are better (cheaper, safer, faster, more efficient) ways of producing energy, we should probably drop the wind mill project!
There is in fact one area popping up already - Thorium reactors, THE NEXT LEVEL DOWN FROM U238-235-230.
Both China and India have planned new plants and apparently they are safe, efficient and CO2-free. And there is no chance of a melt down like in Chernobyl and Fukushima.
It sounds too good to be true.

As always there is an additional aber dabei: it looks increasingly like global warming is NOT created by humans!!!
There's not eggs enough in the world to cover the politicians' faces, so we can't see them blush in shame.
The CO2 elimination chase has made us bark up the wrong tree, missing the required investments in preventing the CONSEQUENCES of climate change.
But that's another discussion that I will cover in this blog later on.

Aesthetic and Emotional issues
It is so easy to criticise and ridicule other people – they did that with Copernicus and Galilei too – but one day, when food supply is expensive or short because we grow sugar cane for car fuel instead, because there’s little or only expensive oil and gas available to run our TV sets, or when the Chinese, Indians and Brazilians use "our" oil, perhaps we’d wish we had pushed the use of various alternative energy supplies  before the problem came crawling up from behind..

There is a large index in the book of energy arguments:Windmills may in some people’s eyes be ugly; the desert should concentrate on exhibiting its beautiful sand dunes and not be covered in solar cells; the Severn Estuary should not be blocked by a tidal flow generator; and the Americans should start paying their share of the Earth’s energy consumption.

Right now, 2012, humans account for ca. 20 TW energy output.
That's nothing compared to the 120,000 TW from the Sun that the Earth has to manage.
But what about it when it becomes 5000 TW in, perhaps, 2-300 years?

There are lots of both good and bad arguments - but we need to start now to prepare ourselves for the future - or aptly: having the wind in the back, not from the front.

We need to prepare for a better "energy future" than the one represented by Clarkson's irony.
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