Fake news - 29th Jan 2018 10:27am
You don't have to tell lies to generate fake news. It can be done by telling the truth but not all of it. Here is a fine example of this sort of dishonesty from the Daily Torygraph.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/08/wind-farms-paid-100m-switch-power/
The article is a rant about 'constraint payments' and owes much to the 'Renewable Energy Foundations' - an organisation which sounds as if it is in favour of renewable energy but is, in fact, a pressure group dedicated to killing it off.
Last year, the article raves, wind farms were paid £100 million to NOT generate electricity. Worse, it quotes figures helpfully supplied by the REF of £367 million paid up over the past five years. They are paid more per kWh not produced than for what they DO produce.
This seems at first glance to be outrageous, but I have no reason to doubt these figures. Nor the claim that the payments have ballooned over the years. So, after all, has the industry so the payments have grown with it.
The dishonesty lies in the fact that nowhere does the article make clear that constraint payments are made to ALL generators, coal, gas, oil, whatever, and the payments made to fossil producers are much higher than those paid to the wind farms. Currently about twice as much. This is quite understandable as starting up or switching off a coal power station is for instance s a complicated and expensive business and takes a long time to complete. The National grid - faced with rising or falling demand, therefore turns to wind farms to produce or shed extra generating capacity as they can be switched on or off in seconds, and it costs less.
So the long and short of it is that if £100 million had not been paid out to wind farms over the past year, something in excess of £200 million would have been handed out to fossil power generators. In other words, wind power has SAVED us money! The exact opposite is implied by this dishonest article.
You might ask why are constraint payments paid to ANY power generator? The reason is that nobody is going to build power generating plant at vast expense without a commitment from the grid that it will be used.and this commitment takes the form of payment for switching them off.
http:/
The article is a rant about 'constraint payments' and owes much to the 'Renewable Energy Foundations' - an organisation which sounds as if it is in favour of renewable energy but is, in fact, a pressure group dedicated to killing it off.
Last year, the article raves, wind farms were paid £100 million to NOT generate electricity. Worse, it quotes figures helpfully supplied by the REF of £367 million paid up over the past five years. They are paid more per kWh not produced than for what they DO produce.
This seems at first glance to be outrageous, but I have no reason to doubt these figures. Nor the claim that the payments have ballooned over the years. So, after all, has the industry so the payments have grown with it.
The dishonesty lies in the fact that nowhere does the article make clear that constraint payments are made to ALL generators, coal, gas, oil, whatever, and the payments made to fossil producers are much higher than those paid to the wind farms. Currently about twice as much. This is quite understandable as starting up or switching off a coal power station is for instance s a complicated and expensive business and takes a long time to complete. The National grid - faced with rising or falling demand, therefore turns to wind farms to produce or shed extra generating capacity as they can be switched on or off in seconds, and it costs less.
So the long and short of it is that if £100 million had not been paid out to wind farms over the past year, something in excess of £200 million would have been handed out to fossil power generators. In other words, wind power has SAVED us money! The exact opposite is implied by this dishonest article.
You might ask why are constraint payments paid to ANY power generator? The reason is that nobody is going to build power generating plant at vast expense without a commitment from the grid that it will be used.and this commitment takes the form of payment for switching them off.