Despite now several decades of breakneck building of wind turbines, no country seems to be able to get even half of its electricity from wind when averaged over the course of a year, and no country has really even begun to solve the problem of needing full backup when the wind doesn't blow.
It's no better over in the territory of co-climate crusader UK. Despite a crash program to build wind turbines, the UK's percent of power from wind in 2022 was 26.8%, according to the BBC on January 6, 2023.
At the website Not A Lot Of People Know That, Paul Homewood on June 21 presents a calculation for the UK of how much wind turbine capacity would be necessary to supply the country with all its electricity needs by building extra wind capacity and using it to electrolyze water into hydrogen.
The total demand for the year came to 262 TWh, but the wind turbines only produced 62 TWh. Brown then calculates how much wind turbine capacity would be needed to generate enough electricity to supply all of the demand, either directly, or by electrolyzing water to make hydrogen and burning the hydrogen.
In other words, the efficiency rate for the full cycle is 20.8%. In simple terms, you need 5 units of wind power to make 1 unit of power from hydrogen.
In other news relating to the future utopia of wind power, we have a piece in the Wall Street Journal of June 23 with the headline, "Clean Energy's Latest Problem Is Creaky Wind Turbines." The first sentence is "The ill wind blowing for clean-energy windmills just got stronger." The article reports that shares of German wind turbine giant Siemens Energy fell 36% on Friday after the company withdrew profit guidance for the rest of the year and stated that components of its installed turbines are wearing out much faster than previously anticipated.
The immediate answer will be more, and still more government subsidies to keep the wind power dream alive.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/06/28/still-waiting-for-the-magical-future-of-free-wind-power/
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