A new report, “Wind Power Reassessed: A review of the UK wind resource for electricity generation”, has been featured in CityAM and Breitbart London.

The report, published jointly by the Adam Smith Institute and the Scientific Alliance, severely undermines the case for a move towards more wind generation in the UK because it suggests that wind can never be a major reliable source of energy for the UK. Specifically, the report found that wind farms generate below 20% of their supposed output for 29 weeks a year, and only exceed 90% of their rated output for 17 hours a year.

From CityAM:

Despite falling costs and improving technology, wind farms continue to be wildly inefficient and overly expensive, according to a new report released today.

In the report for the Adam Smith Institute and the Scientific Alliance, author Dr Capell Aris analysed data on the wind speed and direction collected from a total of 22 sites across the UK, with 6.5m individual recordings.

He found that on average, UK wind farms top 80 per cent of their potential output for less than a week every year. It gets worse as, according to the study, wind turbines are only able to produce 90 per cent or more of their potential power output for a meagre 17 hours a year.

Read the full article here.

From Breitbart London:

The report was undertaken by the Scientific Alliance and the Adam Smith Institute. Using data on wind speed and direction gathered hourly from 22 sites around the UK over the last nine years, the researchers were able to build a comprehensive picture of how much the wind blows in the UK, where it blows, and how variable it is.

They found that, contrary to popular opinion, variability was a significant factor as “swings of around 10 percent are normal” across the whole system within 30 – 90 minute timeframes. “This observation contradicts the claim that a widespread wind fleet installation will smooth variability,” the authors write.

Read the full article here.