The truth about wind turbines: the wind is not always blowing somewhere that matters

The high cost and unreliability of wind power can no longer be ignored.

One of the arguments promoting wind turbines is that the variability and unreliability of wind turbines can be overcome by overbuilding the number of wind farms because “the wind is always blowing somewhere.” Typing that phrase into the Bing search engine produced a response from their AI bot, which tied the phrase to wind energy, although my query did not, exposing the political and ideological bias that every response from an internet search engine has:

Indeed, the wind is a dynamic force that constantly moves across our planet. While it might not blow consistently in any single location, it’s always active somewhere. The movement of gas caused by high and low-pressure systems in our atmosphere drives the wind, creating variability in wind patterns. Interestingly, as we increase the use of renewable energy sources like wind turbines and solar panels, the combined output from these sources becomes more predictable due to the Law of Large Numbers. Essentially, the more renewable energy we have connected to the grid, the less volatile it becomes, reducing concerns about variability and stability. Oversizing renewable systems can even compensate for cloudy days, making them more reliable than ever. So, while the wind isn’t always blowing everywhere, our collective efforts can harness its power effectively! (Note: the bold print was added by the AI bot).

While the wind may constantly be blowing somewhere, relying on that fact to justify overbuilding wind installations obscures the fact that the wind may not always be blowing where it can be used for power generation.

The absence of wind at certain times of the year in Germany has been so consistent for hundreds of years that they have a word for it: dunkelflaute. From November through January, the wind in northern Europe is almost non-existent. Even worse for Germany, the sun does not shine much during those months either, so the blind ambition that Germany could function totally with only wind and solar energy has destroyed the German economy to the point where deindustrialization has been occurring for years. This should be a wakeup call for the U.S.:

One of the biggest drivers has been Germany’s net-zero energy policy, Energiewende, and the country’s rapid move to variable renewables, wind and solar, for electric generation. They necessarily require backup generating capacity, since the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine all the time. That’s usually provided by fossil fuel or nuclear power plants, but Germany passed legislation in 2019 to shut down all its coal plants by 2038, and last year the country shuttered the last three plants in its once-formidable nuclear fleet (in 1990 nuclear provided a quarter of Germany’s electricity). As a result, the country has been forced to import electricity and natural gas at substantially higher prices.

Texas has its own version of dunkelflaute every summer when the wind declines in the afternoon and almost dies entirely at sunset. In addition, the wind in Texas has been trending downward. I published an article on Substack in February 2024 titled Wind power output in Texas is trending down even as wind generation capacity increases.

At least Texas, the largest producer of natural gas in the U.S., has enough natural gas-fired electricity to keep the lights on during the summer when people get home from work and turn down the air conditioning, cook dinner, and wash clothes. Even so, ERCOT, the Texas power grid operator, warned of potential rolling blackouts on many August evenings in 2023. Without natural gas, Texas would already be following Germany and deindustrializing instead of being the fastest-growing state in the U.S.

Texas is not the only part of the U.S. with declining wind. According to the latest data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), all regions in the U.S. are experiencing wind dunkelflaute. EIA’s monthly “Today in Energy,” released July 25, 2024, titled Natural gas electricity generation in the United States spiked with July heatwave, EIA said that natural gas electricity generation spiked during the first half of 2024 partly due to steep drops in wind generation:

U.S. power plant operators generated 6.9 million megawatthours (MWh) of electricity from natural gas on a daily basis in the Lower 48 states on July 9, 2024, probably the most in history and certainly since at least January 1, 2019, when we began to collect hourly data about natural gas generation.

EIA highlighted the increase in natural gas generation with this graph:

The graph shows that natural gas electricity generation in the Lower 48 states hit a high of 6,908,880 MWh on July 9, 2024.

EIA said the spike in natural gas-fired generation on July 9 was caused by high temperatures across most of the country “and a steep drop in wind generation.” Furthermore, wind generation didn’t decline a little; wind generation in July was 1 million MWh less than wind generation a month earlier, according to EIA:

Wind generation in the Lower 48 states totaled 0.3 million MWh on July 9, 2024, much lower than the 1.3 million MWh daily average in June 2024.

My take: So much for the argument that the “wind is always blowing somewhere.” While the wind may always be blowing somewhere in the world, it was not always where it was useful for power generation in the U.S. Of course, the die-hard proponents of wind power argue that this justifies building more and more onshore and offshore wind farms and connecting the U.S. and Canadian power and eventually the world with undersea cables, such as the cable connecting Denmark and the U.K. completed in 2023.

The bigger problem is that wind generation, especially offshore wind generation, is unreliable and insanely expensive. According to U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, plans for a global transition to a low-carbon economy would cost at least $78 trillion. However, there are limits to wind mandates, which is essentially central planning socialism. Margaret Thatcher famously said that socialism always fails because “eventually you run out of other people’s money:”

There simply isn’t enough money to fund wind generation and other “green” energy programs. How much money are we talking about? U.S. Treasury Secretary recently said in a speech that the price tag for a global transition to a low-carbon economy would cost at least $78 trillion in financing through 2050, slightly less than the worldwide GDP in 2023 of $105 trillion.

As the destructiveness and insanity of wind power, especially offshore wind, continues to be revealed by Robert Bryce and others, it is increasingly obvious that wind power is a failure. It is past time for the U.S. to stop subsidizing wind power in the U.S. by repealing the grossly misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act.” The CBO initially scored this bill as costing 437 billion dollars, but Goldman Sachs said the cost was closer to $1.2 trillion. Some have said that the price will ultimately be trillions of dollars because that legislation made wind and solar energy subsidies permanent.

Only an act of Congress can repeal it. Hopefully, that will happen soon after January 20, 2025.

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