Wind Energy PROVEN Unreliable.....From Our Friends In The UK

Over the past two years UK wind turbines metered by the National Grid ran at just 10 per cent of capacity for more than one-third of the time.

And they ran at less than 20 per cent of their capacity for more than half the time, it was claimed. Yet the Government is committed to building thousands more taxpayer-subsidised wind turbines in the quest for greener energy.

The report, carried out by consultant Stuart Young for conservation charity the John Muir Trust, said wind power “cannot be relied on” when electricity is most needed.

It said that once a week on average the wind dropped so low that the turbines produced enough energy for “a mere 6,667 households to boil their kettles for a cup of tea”.

During the four highest peak demands last year, the best wind could manage was 5.5 per cent of capacity.

There were 124 separate occasions from November 2008 till December 2010 when total generation from wind farms metered by the National Grid was less than 1.25 per cent of nominal capacity.

The report, entitled Analysis Of UK Wind Generation, also rejected the industry claim that wind farms generate on average 30 per cent of capacity.

It found that average output from wind was 27.1 per cent of metered capacity in 2009 and 21.1 per cent last year.

It concluded: “It is clear from this analysis that wind cannot be relied upon to provide any significant level of generation at any defined time in the future.

“There is an urgent need to re-evaluate the implications of reliance on wind for any significant proportion of our energy requirement.” The John Muir Trust was founded in 1983 to safeguard wild lands against development and has fought wind farm schemes in sensitive areas. Mr Young said: “The intermittent nature of wind also gives rise to low wind coinciding with high energy demand.

“Sadly, wind power is not what it’s cracked up to be.”

Helen McDade, head of policy at the John Muir Trust, called the report “a real eye-opener” particularly as a “fleet of wind turbines has taken over many of our most beautiful mountains and hillsides”.

Michael Hird, for anti-wind farm campaigners Country Guardian, said: “The countryside is being industrialised for a technology that doesn’t work.

“If we rely on wind power for energy we are living in cloud cuckoo land.” Ukip’s energy spokesman Lord Monckton said: “The report must be the beginning of the end for these ugly, bird-slicing, bat-killing leviathans.

“Their sinister march across our land is destroying the remote and beautiful landscapes and the wild creatures of the UK.” But energy association Renewable UK described the report as “partial, confused and misleading”.

A spokesman said: “The wind farms it has looked at are overwhelmingly from one part of the country, Scotland, so the picture is distorted.

“All energy forms are intermittent. Wind should be part of a broad energy mix. We should have wind, gas, clean coal and nuclear supporting each other.”

A Department of Energy and Climate Change spokesman said: “Wind power provides a home-grown source of electricity that doesn’t produce carbon dioxide.

“The electricity system always has more generating capacity available than the expected demand. By having a diverse energy mix, we can manage the fact that some technologies are intermittent.”