It requires mathematical consideration which is gained at about the 12-year-old level to understand that provisioning supply sufficient to meet the requirement to generate enough electricity during average or low wind periods MUST result in more energy than can be consumed during high wind periods.

The actual mathematical manipulation required is within the reach of an 8/9 year old.

So these issues can not have been unforeseen. They have been suppressed. Because engineers are not running infrastructure policy. Activists are.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. But vigilance is of little use when your warnings are ignored or actively suppressed. By definition, an activist in pursuit of an ideal will always be able to bring greater concentration and investment into changing society than an average man, no matter how vigilant. History has numerous instances - the French Revolution and the English Civil War are examples - where activists overthrew a social system in pursuit of an ideal and then saw that process descend into a dictatorship which consumed the activists themselves.

CS Lewis has a comment on the merits of a savage dictatorship compared to the ministrations of a benevolent set of social activists, with which I am sure you are all familiar...

I started by laughing at this article but my laughter rapidly turned to boiling piss. I have experience of night storage heaters, not by choice, and I recall that typing post graduate essays in winter, while trying to survive on ten pounds per week for food, bus fares and photocopying, was a bloody sight cheaper with numb fingers and multiple layers of faux wool than paying ninety pounds per month to run one fucking radiator and sixty pounds per month to buy gas from the landlady. Night storage heaters were not a good idea: feeling that one should be sweating at breakfast and freezing one's bollocks off at tea time, for more than twice one's food budget, is not a commercially viable proposition.

Edited by user 04 December 2012 04:00:11(UTC)  | Reason: Bah bloody humbug!

I wouldn't worry about that. The expansion of knee-jerk legislation over the last several years means that you're almost certainly regularly doing many 'illegal' things in your daily life anyway. For instance, anyone who thinks that the war in Afghanistan is a bit pointless is probably guilty of 'glorifying terrorism' (?)

Politicians since Blair have successfully provided 'leadership' which has resulted in:

• A widespread contempt for the law

• The assumption that bare-faced lies are acceptable

• An operational process which renders certain sections of the community (mainly the police, bailiffs and politicians) above the law

I am sure that others here can add to the list....

The MTTF would be low. But I guess there'd be no shortage of spares.

Edited by user 04 December 2012 12:15:14(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Another totally ridiculous plan, repeating history in the hope it will give a different result this time.
May I ask for information on these stupid wind turbines. I know a little about electricity and have regularly in my past working life built control systems, single and three phase. But I am puzzled, how does the generator in a wind turbine work? A standard one with a prime mover running at a constant speed, no problem. But wind turbines do not run at anything like constant speed. So, how much electronic gubbins is in the beast, bearing in mind that every change in an energy state has losses associated with it. How do they get electricity for the grid which if I remember right is at about 440 volts and 50 hertz? Sorry to ask but help would be appreciated, I may be old but I can still learn" thank you in anticipation

Derek

Edited by user 04 December 2012 12:46:58(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

That's the point ... you only get power when it's available.