Tuesday
Jul282015
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Spanish fail to fly
Jul 28, 2015 Energy: wind Foreign Interesting news from Spain, where it has been revealed that the country has failed to install a single megawatt of wind power capacity in the last six months. This comes after managing just 27 MW in 2014.
This makes the country's plans to put a further 5000 MW in place by 2020 look just a tad optimistic.
(Link to Spanish language article)
Reader Comments (13)
No surprise in a country that cannot pay the existing wind and solar subsidies and has massive unemployment - a bit like Greece.
Deficit of €30bn.
It was always quixotic
The first subsidy-free Spanish project - Cordal de Montouto, in the State of Galicia - started operating in March.
The 6-turbine scheme is owned by Gas Natural Fenosa (GNF). Galicia is Spain’s windiest region. Salvador Gabarró, president of GNF, says that a capacity factor (or load factor) of 34.2% is needed for an onshore wind turbine to be cost effective.
This puts UK schemes in perspective: I don't think any English schemes have recorded a 34% LF. Nor have many in Scotland or offshore.
It is excellent news that following wholescale fraud, the Spanish Government has reprioritised the importance of unreliable power.
It is interesting to note how national governments can do away with unnecessary uneconomic vanity expenditure, and no one misses out, apart from those who benefit from the excess profits of unnecessary uneconomic vanity expenditure, particularly those that manufactured and rigged the artificial legislative market in the first place.
When I had a business I ran the numbers after 4 years and realised that I would be bankrupt in 10....So I quit.
It was not very complicated: infrastructure replacement, fuel, pension, living cost, complying with increasing regulation, area constraints etc etc. How is it that Governments cannot seem to do these simple calculations and quit their dumbass policies before they bankrupt the economy.
When you have an unviable industry and you remove the subsidies, inevitably the industry will die. Or put another way, if you empty the trough, the pigs will die.
The whole project sprouted as if from the effects of agaric.
In Spain the subsidies are paid pout of general taxation. So when the Spanish Government runs out of taxpayers' money it has to stop paying the subsidies. In the UK subsidies are paid out of consumers' electricity bills, So the Government can carry on forcing the subsidies to be paid and then blame the big six electricity companies.
After demanding guaranteed profit for the life of each installation, the wind industry notes that 70% of Spain's 20,266 turbines are near end of life at beyond 15 or 20 years old and must be replaced.
Could costs have risen in the last two decades? Is this a mutant variant of the Irish Pig Carousel?
Article mentions that electricity demand has started to rise again in Spain. Surely they can borrow Segolene Royal to crash energy consumption by 50% in the next 35 years?
http://www.euractiv.com/sections/energy/french-energy-transition-debate-heats-308920
I just spent two delightful weeks in Mallorca. You'd think with their wall-to-wall sunshine (more hours per day in winter than Scotland gets in summer) the place would be littered with domestic photovoltaic installations. I saw one.
No subsidies = nobody installs it, except perhaps the nerds or the rich.
Same in Portugal, my colleague went there for his holiday: no subsidies, so no domestic PV to be seen.
Contrast this with Scotland - a lot further north, with filthy weather and not enough sunshine, but generous subsidies, so domestic PV installations all over the place, sucking money off the poor and giving it to the better off.
How do I help to end this fraud?
Phillip
"if you empty the trough, the pigs will die"
I now have a nice mental picture of a much-slimmed Gummer and Yeo snuffling about in the mud for scraps, with a rusting trough on its side nearby. If only.
Here in Ontario, Canada:
"At 4 pm on hottest day of year, Nuclear power providing 49% of Ontario's electricity. Hydro 24%. Gas 22%. Wind 4%. Biofuel 0.4% Solar 0.3%."
https://twitter.com/sunlorrie/status/626519720322277376
Oh, and that 24% Hydro would be 24% without wind, as the Hydro producers allow water to go over the dam, because the 4% wind producers have a guaranteed buyer...
Sorry, that should have been "... that 24% Hydro would be 28% without wind...".