Wind farms and end of cold snap

It very much looks as if this lengthy cold but dry snap is coming to an end. Well for the moment at least. For the next few days we should be back to Cornish normal with weather fronts coming in off the Atlantic. Although I have had to crank up the heating my terraced cottage being very small and with neighbours either side doesn't suffer the heat loss of some properties.

One feature of the anticyclone that has given us this settled weather is that the winds have been light or very light. Obviously domestic energy use has been particularly high over the past few weeks. Now interestingly an alternative energy engineer who I have met in the past is a huge fan of wind energy. I most certainly am not. He reckoned that as the wind blew stronger demand for energy increased so that there was a good correlation between wind speed and energy use. I agree with many things he says but this is quite definitely NOT one of them! The weather of the past three weeks is exactly the sort we can get in winter with the turbines being very ineffective.

We really need accurate figures of the actual output of our wind farms at different times of the year and for these figures to be compared with the optimum. Maybe the Freedom of Information Act could yield that information. One of the things that annoys is when someone says such and such a wind farm will provide for the needs of a population of so many. Because the wind farm output is so variable such statements have little value. The media should be nailing this sort of misinformation and not letting the wind farm supporters get away with it.