Wind farms paid not to generate

East Anglian Daily Times Saturday, June 11, 2011 www.eadt.co.uk

Wind farms paid not to generate

THE National Grid has paid wind farms in the recent past not to generate power on very windy days, an executive has admitted - a move attacked by a senior MP as “lunacy”.
Nick Winser, National Grid’s UK executive director, said wind farms had been paid not to generate power on occasions in common with other forms of energy such as gas, coal and nuclear plants.
“That has been happening for the last 21 years, that is the way that the market has existed for that period,” he told members of the Commons select committee on energy
and climate change.
“There is built into the market arrangement, there is a compensation where you can’t generate because of a lack of transmission infrastructure. “We have worked very hard to minimise those amounts by investing sensibly but vigorously in the transmission infrastructure and thoseamounts of money have been managed very, very vigorously
over the 20 years.” He added that it was “right” ultimately that an economic balance was struck
between building a “completely unconstrained” transmission system and occasionally paying generators not to run at times when there was not enough transmission capability.
“That is an economic balance that should be struck and is struck,” he told MPs.
But the admission was attacked by Tim Yeo MP, a former Conservative Environment Minister and chairman of the select committee. “Would you not agree that the public might think that to pay off-shore wind farms a huge extra subsidy to make it worthwhile generating and then to pay them again, if it is too windy, to pay them not to generate, is a lunacy which borders on the Common Agricultural Policy?” he told Mr Winser. Mr Winser repeated that National Grid was “vigorously” tackling this to make sure that low carbon “mega watts” can be used as much as possible. In evidence to the committee on the UK energy supply, Mr Winser also told MPs that “balancing” the system to deal with the intermittent nature of some renewable energy sources such as wind power would have a “profound effect” on the system. He said making sure that there were back up systems that came into force to deal with the intermittent energy sources would cost more. He said a number of measures were being examined to minimise this cost including new “inter connections” with Europe, managing demand and potentially greater
use of energy storage. He said there were “binding environmental targets” for the UK and the
National Grid was playing its part in trying to achieve these targets. Friends of the Earth energy campaigner Paul Steedman said: “The UK could be powering itself using the sun, wind and waves but we’re squandering renewable energy instead of making the most of it. “Energy market rules are so ludicrous that we are paying for clean, green energy that we want - and then not using it. “We should be taking renewable energy as our first priority and leaving polluting
alternatives behind.”

Fight The Cuts March 26th 2011 Integrity Vs injustice

corporate war declared

Sometimes violence can be justified, but this can be problematic when people find it hard to directly identify who the real enemy is. In the case of Hitler it was easy, but took years for people to see what was right before their eyes. Peaceful revolution is a great concept, but it calls for all those in authority to denounce their leaders and absolve the power back to the people. The violence is aimed at specific targets, such as boots who only pay 3% tax, vodafone who owe enough money in taxes to cover the costs of the education cuts. The banks, ,well that one's pretty obvious and speaks for itself. In saying that it would be good to avoid violence, but, to my knowledge there have been few bloodless revolutions. The media and quango government/s are very shrewd and devisive in their dealings and representations of the truth. When we consider the violence that our quango government/s are perpertring on people, not only in this country but also through its illegal wars and occupations of other countries, what is the real cost of a few broken windows or bad graffitti. We must not lose sight nor balance, breaking people's heads and bones is not an end to a means, windows can be replaced, broken bones and death's like that of Ian Tomlinson cannot be justified against material damage. We are in "Now Time" a time for change, corporate war has been declared on the people of the world.